Stephen Sondheim
Photo by Jerry Jackson
Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics for Saturday Night (1954), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), The Frogs (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday In The Park With George (1984), Into The Woods (1987), Assassins (1991), Passion (1994) and Road Show (2008), as well as lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear A Waltz? (1965) and additional lyrics for Candide (1973). Side By Side By Sondheim (1976), Marry Me A Little (1981), You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), Putting It Together (1993/99), and Sondheim On Sondheim (2010) are anthologies of his work as composer and lyricist. For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) and co-composed the score for Reds (1981) and wrote songs for Dick Tracy (1990). He also wrote the songs for the television production Evening Primrose (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) and the play Getting Away With Murder (1996) and provided incidental music for the plays The Girls Of Summer (1956), Invitation To A March (1961), Twigs (1971) and The Enclave (1973). Mr. Sondheim has received the Tony Award for Best Score/Music/Lyrics for Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, and Passion, all of which won the New York Drama Circle Award for Outstanding/Best Musical, as did Pacific Overtures and Sunday In The Park With George. In total, his works have accumulated more than sixty individual and collaborative Tony Awards. Sooner Or Later from the film Dick Tracy won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Mr. Sondheim received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1985 for Sunday In The Park With George. In 1983 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which awarded him the Gold Medal for Music in 2006 and in 2008 received the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. In 1990 he was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University, was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award in the 1993 Kennedy Center Honors, and awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996, the MacDowell Medal in 2013 and the Presidential medal of Freedom in 2015. Mr. Sondheim is on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers, and lyricists, having served as its President from 1973 to 1981. In 1981 he founded Young Playwrights Inc. to develop and promote the work of American playwrights aged 18 years and younger. His collected lyrics with attendant essays have been published in two volumes: Finishing the Hat (2010) and Look, I Made a Hat (2011). In 2010 the Broadway theater formerly known as Henry Miller’s Theatre was renamed in his honor.