Death: Broadway's Stephen Sondheim at 91

Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway legend, has died at 91

Jeff Lunden, Weekend Edition Saturday (npr.org)

Stephen Sondheim created an art form.

Stephen Sondheim, the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning Broadway songwriter has died at age 91.

His death occurred early this morning (11/26/21), according to Aaron Meier at DKC O&M, the producers of Company on Broadway.

Sondheim would have been the first to tell you he was a Broadway baby. As a teenager, he learned about theatrical songwriting from a master – Oscar Hammerstein, the author of Showboat and Oklahoma!, among others – and, by the time Sondheim was 27, he had his first show, West Side Story [now made into a hit movie by Steven Spielberg], on Broadway.

Even though he only wrote lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's music for West Side Story, it was the beginning of a remarkable career in which Sondheim – as lyricist and composer – elevated what was, essentially, a lighthearted, optimistic, commercial entertainment into an art form. More

• 10 Stephen Sondheim songs we'll never stop listening to
• AUDIO: Remembering the influential lyricism of Stephen Sondheim's musicals