Bbc proms stephen sondheim biography

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They divorced when Sondheim was 10; she and her son moved to Bucks County near Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Sondheim received encouragement from his Pennsylvania neighbor, Oscar Hammerstein II, the renowned Broadway lyricist and producer, best known for his shows with Richard Rodgers. It was not professionally staged until 1997 in London.

Steven Spielberg's version of West Side Story opened in early December, and pre-production work began on a cinema adaptation of Follies.

Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, a one-off gala celebration of Steve's life curated by Sondheim and Sir Cameron Mackintosh, was staged at the Sondheim Theatre on 3 May 2021, and previews began on 21 September 2023 for a 16-week run of the show at the Gielgud under the same title, with a gala press night on 3 October.

Sondheim's last musical, Here We Are - based on the movies of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel and written with playwright David Ives - began previewing at The Shed's Griffin Theatre off-Broadway in September 2023 and is due to open on 22 October.

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Stephen died suddenly on the morning of Friday 26 November 2021 at the age of 91 at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, where he had been spending most of his time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is Sondheim’s most frequently produced work.

His second collaboration with John Weidman, Assassins (1990), explored nine men and women who either attempted to or successfully assassinated U.S. presidents. The musical, about an unlikely romance between a handsome soldier who breaks from his beautiful mistress for a relationship with a lonely, unattractive woman, is through-sung — perhaps Sondheim’s most operatic score.

Rick Pender has been an award-winning theater critic since 1986. Several shows have received Punk Rock or Heavy Metal stagings.

In the summer of 2002, the Kennedy Center presented a “Stephen Sondheim Celebration” in Washington, D.C., producing six of his shows in repertory: Sweeney Todd, Company, Sunday inthe Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along, Passion and A Little Night Music.

It suffered from bad timing, first opening off-Broadway around the time the Gulf War began in 1991 and then having its 2001 Broadway debut postponed until 2004 following the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Passion (1994), a melodramatic romance based on a 1981 Italian film, was another partnership with James Lapine.

In the original production Bernadette Peters played the Witch, a vindictive neighbor of the Baker who needs to sort out her own life. Bryn Terfel is the demon barber of Fleet Street and he's joined by M... Read allIn celebration of Stephen Sondheim's unique talents a star-studded cast performs songs from some of his best-loved shows. Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone won in 2011 and 21012 respectively; the 2013 winner was Harold Prince; orchestrator Jonathan Tunick won the 2014 award; and librettist James Lapine in 2015.

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In 2011, among other things, he received the Olivier Special Award, the Chicago Tribune Literary Prize, and the Handel Medallion, (New York City’s highest award for achievement in the arts); the Kennedy Center inaugurated the Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Awards; Road Show opened in London, and volume two of his collected and annotated lyrics, Look I Made a Hat, was published.

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The UK Critics Circle 24th Annual Award for Services to the Arts was given to Mr Sondheim in March 2012 and later that year an acclaimed London production of Merrily We Roll Along opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Sondheim is a film buff, and he has contributed incidental music to several movies, including Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1992), including the song “Sooner or Later,” sung by Madonna and the winner of a 1991 Academy Award® for the year’s best original song.

Sondheim’s shows continue to be frequently staged in theaters across America and beyond.

It had a long, complicated development process, evolving from Wise Guys (with a 1999 workshop) to Bounce (2003, produced in Chicago and Washington, D.C.) and eventually retitled Road Show (receiving an Off-Broadway production in 2008).

Six of Sondheim’s shows have become movies, starting with the Academy Award®-winning West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962).

But Hammerstein was a man of the musical theater, and that sparked the 15-year-old Sondheim’s imagination. He wrote music and lyrics for Anyone Can Whistle (1964), with a script and direction by Arthur Laurents. Many of his songs have been assembled into one-time celebratory concerts and several popular revues, starting with Side by Side by Sondheim (1976).

The show became a legendary hit with fans, although it was not a financial success.

Following Follies, Sondheim and Prince created the delectable A Little Night Music (1973), with a script by Hugh Wheeler and based on Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). It’s one of the few shows that Sondheim advanced the idea of creating, after seeing a London production of Christopher Bond’s play about the murderous barber.

It won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize.

Sondheim and Lapine paired again for Into the Woods (1987), a mash-up of familiar fairy tales — Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel — with the story of a Baker and his wife (who the show’s creators have described as suburban Americans lost in the fairytale stories).

(1965)

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Anthologies of his work as composer and lyricist include:

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• Side By Side By Sondheim (1976)

• Marry Me A Little (1981)

• You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983)

• Putting It Together (1993/99)

• Moving On (2001)

• Sondheim on Sondheim (2010)

• Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends (2022/23)

For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) and co-composed Reds (1981), as well as songs for The Seven Percent Solution (1976) and Dick Tracy (1990).

His shows deal with unexpected themes that range far beyond the traditional subjects typically explored by American musicals.