Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheimis an American composer and lyricist known for more than a half-century of contributions to musical theatre. Sondheim has received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, the Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been described by Frank Rich of The New York Times as "now the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater." His best-known works as composer and lyricist include A Funny...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth22 March 1930
CountryUnited States of America
My cage has many rooms.
I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.
Music is structure out of Chaos
The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
Gotta watch out for directors.
By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.
Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.
White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities.
The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.
The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.
In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.