Stephen Sondheim, one of Broadway history’s songwriting titans, whose music and lyrics raised and reset the artistic standard for the American stage musical, died early Friday at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 91. (NYT)
Over the course of his career, he won an Oscar, a Pulitzer, eight Grammy Awards, eight Tony Awards, a Kennedy Center honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Stephen Sondheim Theater in Manhattan’s Theater District is named for him. (CNN)
During his most fertile creative period, Sondheim collaborated with producer-director Hal Prince. They paired on nine musicals: 1957’s West Side Story, 1962’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 1970’s Company, 1971’s Follies, 1973’s A Little Night Music, 1976’s Pacific Overtures, 1979’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 1981’s Merrily We Roll Along and 2003’s Bounce. (THR)
The movie soundtrack to West Side Story—with lyrics by Sondheim—spent 54 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. That marks the most weeks atop the 65-year-old chart, since the list began regularly publishing on a weekly basis in March of 1956. (Billboard)