Stephen Sondheim

November 18, 1998 (Wednesday) at 8:00 p.m.
Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue
University at Albany, Downtown Campus

NOTE: Video Screening of COMPANY, the making of the original cast album, directed by D. A. Pennebaker 4:00 p.m. in Humanities 354

Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist, has been instrumental in revolutionizing the musical over his forty year career of writing for the musical theatre. Arthur Laurents has described him as "without question, the best Broadway lyricist past or present." His conceptual musicals with significant concerns and dramatic subjects have helped to place the musical on a more serious level than that of the traditional Broadway show. He has been praised for incorporating a variety of musical styles into his scores, using his music to create an attitude for the dramatic situation.

Sondheim wrote the lyrics and music for such classic musicals as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd (1979), Sunday in the Park With George (1984), Into the Woods(1987), and Passion (1994). He also wrote the lyrics for the musicals West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959).

Sondheim's work has won a plethora of accolades including Tony, Drama Desk, New York Drama Critics Circle, Grammy and Academy awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1983, an in 1993 he was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.

Stephen Sondheim will answer questions and discuss his work.

"Besides wit, ingenuity, and warmth, he brings a sense of the character to every word that is sun. He is the first and perhaps the only true theatre lyricist we have." - Burt Shevelove, playwright

"Sondheim's most brilliant accomplishment to date. . .Literate, ironic, playful, enviably clever, altogether professional. . . Sondheim is a quicksilver wordsmith in the great tradition of Cole Porter, Noel Coward and Lorenz Hart." - T. E. Kalem, Time on A Little Night Music

". . .the most melodic and romantic score that Steve has ever written. The music is soaring." - Harold Prince, on Sweeney Todd

"To say that this show breaks new ground is not enough; it also breaks new sky, new water, new flesh and new spirit." - Jack Kroll, Newsweek on Sunday in the Park with George

"It is that joyous rarity, a work of sophisticated artistic ambition and deep political purpose that affords nonstop pleasure." - Elizabeth L. Bland and William A. Henry III, Time on Into the Woods

Cosponsored by the Greater Capital Region Teacher

Introduction by Richard Goldman
Albany Times Union Article