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Akron, Ohio
Akron /ˈækrən/ is the fifth largest city in Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately 39 miles (63 km) south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan Statistical Area covers Summit and Portage counties, and in 2010 had a population of 703,200. Akron is also part of the larger Cleveland-Akron-Elyria Combined Statistical Area, which in 2010 had a population of 2,780,440.
Akron was co-founded in 1825 when suggested by Paul Williams to Simon Perkins. In 1833, "South" was temporarily added to the name when Eliakim Crosby settled a bordering North Akron. After Summit County formed from portions of Portage, Medina, and Stark counties in 1840, Akron succeeded Cuyahoga Falls as county seat a year later. The Akron School Law of 1847 created the K-12 system. In 1851, Sojourner Truth attended a convention and extemporaneously delivered the original "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. During the Civil War, Ferdinand Schumacher supplied the Union Army with oats produced by his mill along the Ohio Canal. Between the 1870's and World War I, numerous churches across the nation were built using the Akron Plan.
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Alliance Theatre
The Alliance Theatre is a theater company in Atlanta, Georgia based at the Alliance Theatre, part of the Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center and is the winner of the 2007 Regional Theatre Tony Award. The company, originally the Atlanta Municipal Theatre, staged its first production (King Arthur) at the Alliance in 1968. The following year the company became the Alliance Theatre Company.
Within a decade, the company had grown tremendously and staged the world premiere of Tennessee Williams' Tiger Tail and was casting such well-known actors as Richard Dreyfuss, Morgan Freeman, Jane Alexander, Paul Winfield, Robert Foxworth, Jo Van Fleet and Cybill Shepherd. Other world premieres included Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.
With the arrival of Kenny Leon as artistic director in 1988, the company began a period of diversification and growth. Leon's work attracted a larger African-American audience by staging a more diverse selection of productions. During Leon's tenure, the company staged premieres of Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky, Alfred Uhry's The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Sandra Deer's So Long on Lonely Street, and Elton John and Tim Rice's musical Aida which went on to Broadway and won the Tony award for Best Original Musical Score. When Leon resigned from the company in 2000, Susan V. Booth became artistic director. Under her direction, the company produced the Broadway-bound production of the musical The Color Purple, and in 2007 presented Sister Act the Musical.
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Atlanta
Atlanta (
/ətˈlæntə/, stressed /ætˈlæntə/, locally /ætˈlænə/) is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia with a 2010 population of 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest in the U.S. It is a major component of a growing southeastern megalopolis known as the Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion. Atlanta is the county seat of Fulton County, and a small portion of the city extends eastward into DeKalb County.
Atlanta began as a settlement located at the terminus of a railroad line, and it was incorporated in 1845. Today, the city is a major business city and the primary transportation hub of the Southeastern United States (via highway, railroad, and air), with Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport being the world's busiest airport since 1998. The World Cities Study Group at Loughborough University rated Atlanta as an "alpha(-) world city." With a gross domestic product of US$270 billion, Atlanta's economy ranks 15th among world cities and sixth in the nation. The city is a center for services, finance, information technology, government, and higher education. Metro Atlanta contains the country's third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies, and is the world headquarters of The Coca-Cola Company, Turner Broadcasting, The Home Depot, AT&T Mobility, UPS, and Delta Air Lines. As of 2010, Atlanta is the seventh most visited city in the United States, with over 35 million visitors per year.
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Avery Fisher Hall
Coordinates: 40°46′22″N 73°58′59″W / 40.77278°N 73.98306°W / 40.77278; -73.98306
Avery Fisher Hall, a concert hall in New York City, is part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex. It is the home of the New York Philharmonic, with a capacity of 2,738 seats.
Designed by Max Abramovitz, the hall opened in 1962 as Philharmonic Hall, as the new home concert venue of the New York Philharmonic, after the orchestra moved from Carnegie Hall. The hall was renamed for Avery Fisher, a member of the Philharmonic board of directors, following his $10.5 million donation to the orchestra in 1973.
The acoustical consulting firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) was hired to design the interior acoustics for the hall. Based on their experience designing and analyzing existing concert halls, BBN acousticians recommended that the hall be designed as a "shoebox" with narrowly-spaced parallel sides (similar in shape to the acoustically-acclaimed Symphony Hall, Boston), with seating for no more than 2,400 patrons. Lincoln Center initially agreed with the recommendation, and BBN provided a series of design specifications and recommendations. However, the New York Herald Tribune began a campaign to increase the seating capacity of the new hall. Late in the design stage, the hall was redesigned to accommodate the critics' desires, but these changes invalidated much of BBN's acoustical design. BBN engineers told Lincoln Center that the hall would sound different from how they had intended it to, but they could not predict what the changes would do.
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Camp Androscoggin
Camp Androscoggin is an all-boys summer camp in Wayne, Maine, and one of the oldest in the state. It is ACA (American Camp Association) accredited. It was founded in 1907 by Edward M. Healy, who became President of the American Camping Association (ACA) in 1916 shortly before his death.
The camp has an average intake of between 225 and 275 boys aged 8 to 15 years, and takes enrollments nationally and internationally.
Camp Androscoggin was established in 1907 on Sans Souci Island, since renamed "Androscoggin Island", in Lake Androscoggin. During the camp's inaugural summer, only 7 campers were enrolled. In 1937, a new "Junior Camp" was added on the lake's shore, which was initially for campers aged 8 to 11 years. The two camps briefly combined during World War II due to a fuel shortage, and combined permanently inland in 1972 after a fire. Androscoggin was the site of the third and fourth Seeds of Peace camps in 1995-96.
Camp Androscoggin has had many notable campers including Zach Berke, Stephen Sonheim, Allen Jay Lerner, and William Zeckendorf.
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Fairfield, Iowa
Fairfield is a city in, and the county seat of, Jefferson County, Iowa, United States. It has a primarily white population totaling 9,464 people according to the 2010 census. It is a Midwestern city surrounded by rolling farmlands filled with corn, soybean, cattle and hogs with a median family income of $46,138 (10% of families below the poverty line). The city became the county seat in 1839 with 110 residents and grew to 650 by 1847. Its library was established in 1853 and it held its first fair in 1854. Early architecture includes work by George Franklin Barber and Barry Byrne, who trained under Frank Lloyd Wright.
The city has an “abundance of start-up companies” and has been called "one of the state's economic superstars". It has received The Grassroots Rural Entrepreneurship Award, been nicknamed “silicorn valley” and was featured in a 2012 episode of the TV show, Oprah's Next Chapter. It has been the home of Maharishi University of Management (formerly Maharishi International University) since 1974 and has been referred to as the "the world's largest training center" for practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation technique. The city includes the $6 million Fairfield Arts & Convention Center (FACC), built in 2007. In 2010, it was named one of six Iowa Great Places.
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George School
George School is a private Quaker (Society of Friends) boarding and day high school located on a rural campus near Newtown, Pennsylvania, USA. It was founded at its present site in 1893, and has grown from a single building (still standing) to over 20 academic, athletic, and residential buildings. Besides the usual college preparatory courses, including an International Baccalaureate program, the school features several distinct programs deriving from its Quaker heritage. These include work camps and community service requirements, an emphasis on social justice and environmental concerns, required arts courses, and community-based decision making.
George School was founded in 1891 and opened in 1893. It is named for John M. George, who donated much of the money for the school. It was intended as a school for Hicksite members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) who wanted an alternative to Orthodox Westtown School. The two schools have remained friendly rivals in athletics, although the sectarian rift between them was resolved in the 1950s. The Patterson Cup (commonly known as "the moose" for the moose head at Westtown where the tally was kept by hanging tea bags on alternating antlers) is awarded each year to the school which has won the most varsity and junior varsity contests between the schools. An alumni fundraising competition between the schools, the "Machemer Cup" also exists.
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Goodman Theatre
The Goodman Theatre is a professional theater company located in Chicago's Loop. A major part of Chicago theatre, it is the city's oldest currently active nonprofit theater organization. Its present building occupies the site of landmark Harris and Selwyn Theaters property.
The Goodman was founded in 1925 as a tribute to the Chicago playwright Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, who died in the Great Influenza Pandemic in 1918. The theater was funded by Goodman's parents, Mr. and Mrs. William O. Goodman, who donated $250,000 to the Art Institute of Chicago to establish a professional repertory company and a school of drama at the Institute. The first theater was designed by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw (in the location now occupied by the museum's Modern Wing), although its design was severely hampered by location restrictions resulting in a lack of space for scenery and effects and poor acoustics.
The opening ceremony on October 20, 1925 featured three of Kenneth Sawyer Goodman's plays: Back of the Yards, The Green Scarf, and The Game of Chess. Two nights later the theater presented its first public performance, John Galsworthy's The Forest.
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Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center is a library and archive at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the United States and Europe. The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts, 1 million rare books, 5 million photographs, and more than 100,000 works of art. The Center has a reading room for scholars and galleries which display rotating exhibitions of works and objects from the collections.
The two most prominent possessions in the Ransom Center's collections are a Gutenberg Bible (one of only 21 complete copies known to exist) and Nicéphore Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras, the first successful permanent photograph from nature. Both of these objects are on permanent display in the main lobby.
Beyond these, the Center houses many culturally important documents and artifacts. Particular strengths include modern literature, performing arts, and photography. Some notable holdings include:
Coordinates: 30°17′03″N 97°44′28″W / 30.2843°N 97.7412°W / 30.2843; -97.7412
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Kennedy Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport (IATA: JFK, ICAO: KJFK, FAA LID: JFK) is an international airport located in the borough of Queens in New York City, about 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Lower Manhattan. In 2011 it was the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States, handling more international traffic than any other airport in North America. It is also the leading freight gateway to the country by value of shipments. In 2011, the airport handled 47,809,910 passengers, making it the 17th busiest airport in the world and sixth busiest in the United States in terms of passenger traffic. The New York City metropolitan area's JFK International, LaGuardia, and Newark International airports combine to create the largest airport system in the United States, second in the world in terms of passenger traffic, and first in the world in terms of total flight operations. In the last few years it has made extensive improvements to terminals, roadways and inter-terminal transportation.
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Kennedy Center
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (on the building itself called the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center) is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The Center, which opened on September 8, 1971, produces and presents theater, dance, ballet, orchestral, chamber, jazz, popular, and folk music, in addition to multi-media performances for all ages.
It is the busiest performing arts facility in the United States and annually hosts approximately 2,000 performances for audiences totaling nearly two million; Center-related touring productions, television, and radio broadcasts welcome 20 million more. Now in its 40th season, the Center presents the greatest examples of music, dance and theater; supports artists in the creation of new work; and serves the nation as a leader in arts education. With its artistic affiliate, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Center's achievements as a commissioner, producer, and nurturer of developing artists have resulted in over 200 theatrical productions, dozens of new ballets, operas, and musical works.
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Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a 16.3-acre (6.6-hectare) complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.[citation needed]
A consortium of civic leaders and others led by, and under the initiative of John D. Rockefeller III, built Lincoln Center as part of the "Lincoln Square Renewal Project" during Robert Moses's program of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. Respected architects were contacted to design the major buildings on the site, and over the next thirty years the previously blighted area around Lincoln Center became a new cultural hub.
Rockefeller was Lincoln Center's inaugural president from 1956 and became its chairman in 1961. He is credited with raising more than half of the $184.5 million in private funds needed to build the complex, including drawing on his own funds; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also contributed to the project. The center's three buildings, Avery Fisher Hall (formerly Philharmonic Hall), the Metropolitan Opera House and the David H. Koch Theater (formerly the New York State Theater), were opened in 1962, 1964 and 1966, repsectively.
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Manhattan
Manhattan (/mænˈhætən/) is the most densely populated and the oldest of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the U.S. state of New York. The borough and county consist of Manhattan Island and several small adjacent islands: Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island, Wards Island, Governors Island, Liberty Island, part of Ellis Island,Mill Rock, and U Thant Island; as well as Marble Hill, a very small area on the mainland bordering the Bronx. The original city of New York began at the southern end of Manhattan, expanded northward, and then between 1874 and 1898, annexed land from surrounding counties.
The New York County is the most densely populated county in the United States, and one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a 2010 population of 1,585,873 living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.5 km2), or 69,464 residents per square mile (26,924/km²), more dense than any individual American city. It is also one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a 2005 per capita income above $100,000. Manhattan is the third-largest of New York's five boroughs in population, and its smallest borough in land area.
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Oberlin College
Coordinates: 41°17′35″N 82°13′07″W / 41.292929°N 82.218576°W / 41.292929; -82.218576
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the country. The college's motto is "Learning and Labor."
Oberlin is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium.
Both the college and the town of Oberlin were founded in 1833 by a pair of Presbyterian ministers, John Jay Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart. The ministers named their project after Jean-Frédéric Oberlin, an Alsatian minister whom they both admired. Oberlin attained prominence because of the influence of its second president, the evangelist Charles Finney, after whom one of the College's chapels and performance spaces is named. Asa Mahan (1800–1889) served as Oberlin's first president from 1835–1850.
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Oberlin, Ohio
Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, to the south and west of Cleveland. Oberlin is perhaps best known for being the home of Oberlin College, a liberal arts college and music conservatory with approximately 3,000 students. The town is also the birthplace of the Anti-Saloon League.
The second largest employer in Oberlin (after the eponymous College) is the Federal Aviation Administration, which houses an Air Route Traffic Control Center in the town. Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center is one of the most transitioned air traffic control centers in the country, and oversees the airspace over six states and a small part of Canada.
The population was 8,195 at the 2000 census.
Oberlin was founded in 1833 by two Presbyterian ministers, John Jay Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart. The pair had become friends while spending the summer of 1832 together in nearby Elyria and discovered a shared dissatisfaction with what they saw as the lack of strong Christian morals among the settlers of the American West. Their proposed solution was to create a religious community that would more closely adhere to Biblical commandments, along with a school for training Christian missionaries who would eventually spread throughout the American frontier. The two decided to name their community after Jean-Frédéric Oberlin (1740–1826), an Alsatian minister whose pedagogical achievements in a poor and remote area had greatly impressed and inspired them.
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Oxford
Oxford
i/ˈɒksfəd/ is a city in central southern England, the home of the University of Oxford. The city is the county town of Oxfordshire, and forms a district within the county. It has a population of just under 165,000, of whom 153,900 live within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames (also sometimes known as the Isis locally) run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre.
Oxford has a diverse economic base. Its industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing and a large number of information technology and science-based businesses.
Buildings in Oxford demonstrate an example of every English architectural period since the arrival of the Saxons, including the iconic, mid-18th century Radcliffe Camera. Oxford is known as the "city of dreaming spires", a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold in reference to the harmonious architecture of Oxford's university buildings. The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
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Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( /ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə/) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,526,006 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Philadelphia is also the commercial, cultural, and educational center of the Delaware Valley, home to 6 million people and the country's fifth-largest metropolitan area. The Philadelphia metropolitan division consists of five counties in Pennsylvania and has a population of 4,008,994. Popular nicknames for Philadelphia are Philly and The City of Brotherly Love, the latter of which comes from the literal meaning of the city's name in Greek (Greek: Φιλαδέλφεια ([pʰilaˈdelpʰeːa], Modern Greek: [filaˈðelfia]) "brotherly love", compounded from philos (φίλος) "loving", and adelphos (ἀδελφός) "brother").
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Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the U.S. state of Oregon, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States. Portland is Oregon's most populous city, and the third most populous city in the Pacific Northwest region, after Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. Approximately 2,260,000 people live in the Portland metropolitan area (MSA), the 23rd most populous in the United States.
Portland was incorporated in 1851 and is the county seat of Multnomah County. The city extends west into the Cedar Mill neighborhood in Washington County and south towards Lake Oswego in Clackamas County. With a commission-based government headed by a mayor and four other commissioners, the city and region are noted for strong land-use planning and investment in light rail, supported by Metro, a distinctive regional government. Because of its public transportation networks and efficient land use planning, Portland has been referred to as one of the most environmentally friendly, or "green", cities in the world.
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Richmond, Virginia
Richmond ( /ˈrɪtʃmənd/) is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and the Greater Richmond area. The population within the city limits was 204,214 in 2010, with an estimated population of 1,258,251 for the Richmond Metropolitan Area — making it the third largest in Virginia.
Geographically, Richmond is located at the fall line of the James River, 108 miles (174 km) south of Washington DC, 71 miles (114 km) east of Charlottesville, and 54 miles (87 km) west of Williamsburg. Surrounded by Henrico and Chesterfield counties, the city is located at the intersections of Interstate 95 and Interstate 64, and encircled by Interstate 295 and Virginia State Route 288.
The site of Richmond, at the fall line of the James River, had been an important village of the Powhatan Confederacy, and was briefly settled by English colonists from Jamestown in 1609, and in 1610–1611. The present city of Richmond was founded in 1737. It became the capital of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia in 1780. During the Revolutionary War period, several notable events occurred in the city, including Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech in 1775 at St. John's Church, and the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom written by Thomas Jefferson. During the American Civil War, Richmond served as the capital of the Confederate States of America. The city entered the 20th century with one of the world's first successful electric streetcar systems, as well as a national hub of African-American commerce and culture, the Jackson Ward neighborhood.
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The Public Theater
Coordinates: 40°43′45.1848″N 73°59′30.4548″W / 40.729218°N 73.991793°W / 40.729218; -73.991793
The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as The Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers. It is headquartered at 425 Lafayette Street in the former Astor Library in the East Village section of Lower Manhattan. The venue opened in 1967, mounting the world-premiere production of the musical HAIR as its first show. It currently is led by Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham.
The Public is dedicated to embracing the complexities of contemporary society and nurturing both artists and audiences, as it continues Joseph Papp's legacy of creating a place of inclusion and a forum for ideas.
In addition to five theater venues – the Shiva, the Martinson, the LuEsther Hall, the Anspacher and the Newman – the site is home to Joe's Pub, a cabaret-style setting used for new work, musical performances, spoken-word artists and soloists.
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The Public Theatre
Coordinates: 40°43′45.1848″N 73°59′30.4548″W / 40.729218°N 73.991793°W / 40.729218; -73.991793
The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as The Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers. It is headquartered at 425 Lafayette Street in the former Astor Library in the East Village section of Lower Manhattan. The venue opened in 1967, mounting the world-premiere production of the musical HAIR as its first show. It currently is led by Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham.
The Public is dedicated to embracing the complexities of contemporary society and nurturing both artists and audiences, as it continues Joseph Papp's legacy of creating a place of inclusion and a forum for ideas.
In addition to five theater venues – the Shiva, the Martinson, the LuEsther Hall, the Anspacher and the Newman – the site is home to Joe's Pub, a cabaret-style setting used for new work, musical performances, spoken-word artists and soloists.
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The San Remo
Coordinates: 40°46′41″N 73°58′30″W / 40.778036°N 73.974971°W / 40.778036; -73.974971
The San Remo (145 and 146 Central Park West) is a luxury, 27-floor, co-operative apartment building in New York City located between 74th and 75th streets, which is three blocks north of the Dakota building. The San Remo is described by Glen Justice of the New York Times as "a dazzling two-tower building with captivating views of Central Park." As a housing cooperative, its board has a "reputation for lenient admissions standards" compared to the conservative, old-money boards on the other side of the park.
Past and present residents of the building include such famous personalities as Stephen Sondheim, Tiger Woods, Steven Spielberg, Donna Karan, Demi Moore, Glenn Close, Stanley Donen, Dustin Hoffman, U2 frontman Bono, Steve Martin, Charles Nolan, Bruce Willis, Eddie Cantor, Elaine May, Robert Stigwood, Marshall Brickman, Jackie Leo, Don Hewitt, Billy Squier, and Texas natural-gas heiress Adelaide de Menil but also some businessmen: Dodi Fayed, Andrew Tobias, Aaron Spelling, Jack Sherwall, Hedy Lamarr. Rita Hayworth spent her last years there. In 2007 same-floor residents Bono and Billy Squier went to court over a fireplace. Steve Jobs bought and renovated a penthouse apartment but never lived in it, ultimately selling it to Bono.
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University of Utah
The University of Utah (also referred to as The U, the U of U or Utah) is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States.
As the state's flagship university, Utah offers more than 100 undergraduate majors and more than 90 graduate degree programs. Graduate studies include the S.J. Quinney College of Law and the School of Medicine, Utah's only medical school. As of 2011, there are 23,371 undergraduate students and 7,448 graduate students, for an enrollment total of 30,819; with 84% coming from Utah and 6% coming from foreign countries. Just over 10% of students live on campus.
The university's athletic teams, the Utes, participate in NCAA Division I athletics (FBS for football) as a member of the Pacific-12 Conference. Its football team has received national attention in recent years for winning the 2005 Fiesta Bowl and the 2009 Sugar Bowl.
The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest institution of higher education. It received its current name in 1892, four years before Utah attained statehood, and moved to its current location in 1900.
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Upper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 110th Street. The Upper West Side is sometimes also considered to include the neighborhood of Morningside Heights.
Like the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side is an upscale, primarily residential, area, with many of its residents working in more commercial areas in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. While these distinctions were never hard-and-fast rules and now mean little, it has the reputation of being home to New York City's cultural and artistic workers, while the Upper East Side is traditionally perceived to be home to commercial and business types.
The Upper West Side is bounded on the south by 58th Street, Central Park to the east, and the Hudson River to the west. Its northern boundary is somewhat less obvious. Although it has historically been cited as 110th Street, which fixes the neighborhood alongside Central Park, it is now sometimes considered to be 125th Street, encompassing Morningside Heights. This reflects demographic shifts in Morningside Heights, as well as the tendency of real estate brokers to co-opt the tony Upper West Side name when listing Morningside Heights and Harlem apartments.[citation needed] The area north of West 96th Street and east of Broadway is also identified as Manhattan Valley. The overlapping area west of Amsterdam Avenue to Riverside Park was once known as the Bloomingdale District.
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West Palm Beach
West Palm Beach, is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and is the most populous city in and county seat of Palm Beach County, the third most populous county in Florida with a 2010 population of 1,320,134. The city is also the oldest incorporated municipality in South Florida. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010 the city had an estimated population of 99,919. The city is one of the principal cities in the South Florida metropolitan area, which has a population of 5,564,635.
As of 2000, there were 34,769 households out of which 22.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.3% were married couples living together, 13.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 47.5% were non-families. 37.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.26 and the average family size was 3.02.
In the city, in 2000, 21.3% of the population is under the age of 18, 9.8% from 18 to 24, 31.5% from 25 to 44, 21.4% from 45 to 64, and 16.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 97.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.8 males.
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Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this period, beginning in 1962. Williams forms part of the historic Little Three colleges, along with Wesleyan University and rival Amherst College.
There are three academic curricular divisions (humanities, sciences and social sciences), 24 departments, 33 majors, and two master's degree programs in art history and development economics. There are 315 voting faculty members, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 7:1. As of 2009, the school has an enrollment of 2,124 undergraduate students and 49 graduate students.
The academic year follows a 4-1-4 schedule of two four-course semesters plus a one-course "winter study" term in January. A summer research schedule involves about 200 students on campus completing projects with professors.
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Yale University
Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university located in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.
Incorporated as the "Collegiate School," the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed "Yale College" to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. school to award the PhD. Yale became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. Yale College was transformed, beginning in the 1930s, through the establishment of residential colleges: 12 now exist and two more are planned. Yale employs over 1,100 faculty to teach and advise about 5,300 undergraduate and 6,100 graduate and professional students. Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.
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Aaron Lazar
Aaron Lazar is an American stage, film and television actor.
Lazar was born in Cherry Hill, New Jersey to a Jewish family. He graduated from Cherry Hill High School West in 1994. Lazar attended Duke University where he earned a BA in music in 1998, while completing the prerequisite classes for medical school and taking the MCAT. He then studied at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where he earned an MFA in musical theater in 2000.
After landing the role of understudy to the lead in the Broadway National Tour of The Scarlet Pimpernel only months after moving to New York City, Lazar abandoned his aspirations of being a medical doctor. He received a Drama Desk Award Nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance as Enjolras in Les Misérables.
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Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an Academy and Emmy award winning American screenwriter, producer, and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network, and Moneyball.
After graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre in 1983, Sorkin spent much of the 1980s in New York as a struggling, sporadically employed actor. He found his passion in writing plays, and quickly established himself as a promising young playwright. His stage play A Few Good Men caught the attention of Hollywood producer David Brown, who bought the film rights before the play even premiered.
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Addison Mizner
Addison Cairns Mizner (December 12, 1872 – February 5, 1933) was an American resort architect whose Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style interpretations left an indelible stamp on South Florida, where it continues to inspire architects and land developers. In the 1920s Mizner was the best-known and most-discussed living American architect. Mizner was the visionary behind development of Boca Raton, Florida.
Born in Benicia, California, he traveled as a child around the world with his father, Lansing Bond Mizner, a lawyer and the U. S. minister to Guatemala, who was recalled to the United States in 1891 by President Benjamin Harrison after the Barrundia Affair.
Little is known about Addison Mizner's sketches and artwork prior to his architectural career, but his subsequent work shows him to be a fine draftsman and an artist who painted beautiful watercolors.
Although he lacked formal university training, Mizner served a 3 year apprenticeship in the office of San Francisco architect, Willis Jefferson Polk, eventually becoming a partner. Later, while traveling in Hawaii, he co-authored a book with Ethel Watts Mumford entitled The Cynic's Calendar of Revised Wisdom for 1903. The book was an unexpected success and spawned seven sequels. Later, he also wrote with her The Limerick Up To Date Book (1903) and The Complete Cynic (1910).
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Adolph Green
Adolph Green (December 2, 1914 – October 23, 2002) was an American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved movie musicals, particularly as part of Arthur Freed's production unit at MGM, during the genre's heyday. Many people thought the pair were married; they were not, but they shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them to forge a six-decade-long partnership that produced some of Hollywood and Broadway's greatest hits.
Green was born in The Bronx to Hungarian-Jewish immigrants Daniel and Helen Weiss Green. After high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street while he tried to make it as an actor. He met Comden through mutual friends in 1938 while she was studying drama at New York University. They formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Among the members of the company was a young comedian named Judy Tuvim, who later changed her name to Judy Holliday, and Green's good friend, a young musician named Leonard Bernstein, frequently accompanied them on the piano. The act's success earned them a movie offer and the Revuers traveled west in hopes of finding fame in Greenwich Village, a 1944 movie starring Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche, but their roles were so small they barely were noticed, and they quickly returned to New York.
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Al Carmines
Reverend Alvin Allison "Al" Carmines, Jr. (July 25, 1936 – August 9, 2005) was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s.
Carmines was born in Hampton, Virginia. Although his musical talent appeared early, he decided to enter the ministry, attending Swarthmore College, majoring in English and philosophy, and then Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, earning a bachelor of divinity in 1961 and a master of sacred theology in 1963.
Carmines was hired by Howard Moody as an assistant minister at Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park, New York, to found a theater in the sanctuary of the Greenwich Village church in conjunction with playwright Robert Nichols. He began composing in 1962 and acted as well. His Bible study group grew into the Rauschenbusch Memorial Church of Christ, with Carmines as pastor.
Carmines taught at Union Theological Seminary and received the Vernon Rice Award for his performance and the Drama Desk Award for Lyrics and Music and was awarded the Obie award for Life Time Achievements.
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Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais (French pronunciation: [alɛ̃ ʁɛnɛ]; born 3 June 1922) is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) (1955), an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.
He began making feature films in the late 1950s and consolidated his early reputation with Hiroshima mon amour (1959), L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad) (1961), and Muriel (1963), all of which adopted unconventional narrative techniques to deal with themes of troubled memory and the imagined past. These films were contemporary with, and associated with, the French New Wave or nouvelle vague, though Resnais did not regard himself as being fully part of that movement. He had closer links to the 'Left Bank group' of authors and filmmakers who shared a commitment to modernism and an interest in left-wing politics. He also established a regular practice of working on his films in collaboration with writers usually unconnected with the cinema, such as Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jorge Semprún.
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Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit Relatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.
Major successes include Absurd Person Singular (1975), The Norman Conquests trilogy (1973), Bedroom Farce (1975), Just Between Ourselves (1976), A Chorus of Disapproval (1984), Woman in Mind (1985), A Small Family Business (1987), Man Of The Moment (1988), House & Garden (1999) and Private Fears in Public Places (2004). His plays have won numerous awards, including seven London Evening Standard Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. Ten of his plays have been staged on Broadway, attracting two Tony nominations, and one Tony award.
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Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full time, his first stage play Forty Years On being produced in 1968.
His output includes The Madness of George III and its film incarnation The Madness of King George, the series of monologues Talking Heads, the play The History Boys, and popular audio books, including his readings of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh.
Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire. The son of a co-op butcher, Walter and his wife Lilian Mary (nee Peel), Bennett attended Christ Church, Upper Armley, Church of England School (in the same class as Barbara Taylor Bradford) and then Leeds Modern School (now Lawnswood School), learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his national service and gained a place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. However, having spent time in Cambridge during national service, and partly wishing to follow the object of his unrequited love, he decided to apply for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford from which he graduated with a first-class degree in history. While at Oxford he performed comedy with a number of eventually successful actors in the Oxford Revue. He was to remain at the university for several years, where he researched and taught Medieval History, before deciding he was not cut out to be an academic.
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Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986) was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.
Born in New York City, he was the son of Edith Adelson Lerner and Joseph Jay Lerner, whose brother, Samuel Alexander Lerner, was founder and owner of the Lerner Stores, a chain of dress shops. One of Lerner's cousins was the radio comedian/television game show panelist Henry Morgan. Alan Jay Lerner was educated at Bedales School in England, The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, (where he wrote "The Choate Marching Song") and Harvard. He attended both Camp Androscoggin and Camp Greylock. At both Choate and Harvard, Lerner was a classmate of John F. Kennedy; at Choate they had worked together on the yearbook staff. Like Cole Porter at Yale and Richard Rodgers at Columbia, his career in musical theater began with his collegiate contributions, in Lerner's case to the annual Harvard Hasty Pudding musicals. During the summers of 1936 and 1937, Lerner studied at Juilliard. While attending Harvard, he lost his sight in his left eye due to an accident in the boxing ring. In 1957, Lerner and Leonard Bernstein, another of Lerner's college classmates, collaborated on "Lonely Men of Harvard," a tongue-in-cheek salute to their alma mater.
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Alan Menken
Alan Menken (born July 22, 1949) is a pianist and composer of American musical theatre and film.
Menken is best known for his scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Home on the Range, The Shaggy Dog, Enchanted, and most recently, Tangled. Menken has collaborated on several occasions with lyricists including Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, and Stephen Schwartz. With nineteen nominations and eight wins, Menken has won the third most Oscars of any person, after Walt Disney (twenty-two wins) and Alfred Newman (nine wins).
Menken was born in New York, NY to a Jewish family, the son of Judith and Norman Menken, a dentist. He developed an interest in music at an early age, studying piano and violin. He went to New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, New York. He attended college as a pre-med student, but later changed his focus to music at NYU Steinhardt. After college, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. He performed frequently in local clubs and worked as a composer of jingles and songs and as an accompanist.
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Alexander Gemignani
Alexander Cesare Gemignani (born July 3, 1979) is a Broadway actor and tenor. Gemignani was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey and is a graduate of the University of Michigan's Musical Theater Department. He is the son of Broadway musical director Paul Gemignani and soprano Carolann Page.
In addition, Gemignani participated in a memorable performance of Opening Doors from Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along at Symphony Space's March, 2005 Wall to Wall Sondheim event celebrating Sondheim's 75th birthday. He also performed in the NY Philharmonic's Gala honoring Sondheim's 80th birthday, singing "Something's Coming" from West Side Story. He performed at the City Center Gala honoring Stephen Sondheim, singing various songs.
Gemignani was married in August 2008 to Actor/Director Erin Ortman.
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Andrew Lippa
Andrew Lippa (December 22, 1964) is an American composer, lyricist, book writer, performer, and producer. He is a resident artist at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City.
Lippa was born in Leeds, England. to English parents. He emigrated to the US in October, 1967 and grew up in Oak Park, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. He attended Oak Park High School in Oak Park, Michigan. While at Michigan, Lippa studied vocal performance but eventually transferred into music education and received his bachelor’s degree in music education. After graduating from the University of Michigan, In 1987 Lippa moved to New York City and became a middle school music teacher at Columbia Grammar and Prep School (CGPS) on the Upper West Side. He was promoted his second year at (CGPS) to dean of 7th and 8th grade students – an assistant principal position – and held that post, in addition to teaching music, until June 1991. In 1988 Lippa was accepted into the celebrated BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as a composer. There he met his future collaborator Tom Greenwald (John & Jen) He later pursued a music career.
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Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.
Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.
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André Previn
André George Previn, KBE (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929) is a German-American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings.
Previn was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Charlotte (née Epstein) and Jack Previn, who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher. He is said to be "a distant relative of" the composer Gustav Mahler. However, In a pre-concert public interview at the Lincoln Center, in May 2012, Previn laughed at the suggestion that he is related to Mahler. The year of his birth is uncertain. Whilst most published reports give 1929, Previn himself has stated that 1930 is his birth year. This situation is a consequence of his the family losing Previn's birth certificate when they left Germany in 1938.[citation needed] His elder brother was director Steve Previn.[citation needed] The Previn family, which was Jewish,[citation needed] emigrated to the United States in 1939 to escape the Nazi regime in Germany.[citation needed]
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Anthony Drewe
Anthony Drewe is a British lyricist and book writer for Broadway and West End musicals. He is best known for his collaborations with George Stiles.
They have also contributed work to
Best Musical - Mary Poppins nominated
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Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and pianist. In a recording career that has spanned over half a century, Franklin's repertoire has included gospel, jazz, blues, R&B, pop, rock and funk. Franklin is known as one of the most important popularizers of the soul music genre and is referred to as the Queen of Soul, a title she was given early in her career. Franklin, the daughter of prominent Baptist minister and activist C. L. Franklin, began her singing career singing in her father's church at the age of ten and started recording four years later. After several years in the gospel circuit and with her father's blessing, she formed a secular pop music career at the age of eighteen, signing with Columbia Records, where she was branded by its CEO John Hammond as his most important act since Billie Holiday. Franklin's Columbia period wasn't as successful as hoped and in late 1966, Franklin switched over to Atlantic Records, where she began recording a string of popular hits including "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Think", "Chain of Fools" and what later became her signature song, "Respect".
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Aristophanes
Aristophanes (English pronunciation: /ˌærɨˈstɒfəniːz/; Ancient Greek: [aristopʰánɛːs]; Ἀριστοφάνης, ca. 446 BC – ca. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his 40 plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are in fact used to define the genre. Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy, Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander contributing to the trial and execution of Socrates although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher. His second play, The Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. It is possible that the case was argued in court but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights, the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through the Chorus in that play, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all." (κωμῳδοδιδασκαλίαν εἶναι χαλεπώτατον ἔργον ἁπάντων)
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Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.
After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, Laurents turned to writing for Broadway, producing a body of work that includes West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Hallelujah, Baby! (1967) and La Cage Aux Folles (1983), and directing some of his own shows and other Broadway productions.
His early film scripts include Rope (1948) for Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Anastasia (1956), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), The Way We Were (1973) and The Turning Point (1977).
Born Arthur Levine, Laurents was the son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher who gave up her career when she married. He was born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, New York, the elder of two children, and attended Erasmus Hall High School. His sister Edith suffered from chorea as a child.
His paternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews, and his mother's parents, although born Jewish, were atheists. His mother kept a kosher home for her husband's sake, but was lax about attending synagogue and observing the Jewish holidays. His Bar Mitzvah marked the end of Laurents's religious education and the beginning of his rejection of all fundamentalist religions, although he continued to identify himself as Jewish. However, late in life he admitted to having changed his last name from Levine to the less Jewish-sounding Laurents, "to get a job."
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Audra McDonald
Audra Ann McDonald (born July 3, 1970) is an American actress and singer. She starred in the ABC television drama Private Practice as Dr. Naomi Bennett. She has appeared on the stage in both musicals and dramas, such as Ragtime and A Raisin in the Sun. She maintains an active concert and recording career, performing song cycles and operas as well as performing in concert throughout the US. She has won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress four times, twice each for plays and musicals.
Born in Berlin, Germany and raised in Fresno, California, the elder of two daughters, she began to study acting at a young age to counteract her diagnosis as "hyperactive". McDonald graduated from the Roosevelt School of the Arts program within Theodore Roosevelt High School in Fresno. She got her start in acting with Dan Pessano and Good Company Players, beginning in their Junior Company. "I knew I wanted to be involved in theater when I had my first chance to perform with the Good Company Players Junior Company." "The people who have had the most impact on my life: Good Company director Dan Pessano and my mother." She studied classical voice as an undergraduate under Ellen Faull at the Juilliard School, graduating in 1993.
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B.B. King
Riley B. King (born September 16, 1925), known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American songwriter, vocalist, and famed blues guitarist.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at No. 6 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. and No. 17 in in Gibson's Top 50 Guitarists of All Time. According to Edward M. Komara, King "introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending and shimmering vibrato that would influence virtually every electric blues guitarist that followed." King was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
King was born in a small cabin on a cotton plantation outside of Berclair, Mississippi, to Albert King and Nora Ella Farr on September 16, 1925.
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B.D. Wong
Bradley Darryl "BD" Wong (born October 24, 1960) is an American actor, best known for his roles as Dr. George Huang on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as Father Ray Mukada on HBO's Oz, Henry Wu in the movie Jurassic Park, and for his Tony Award winning role as Song Liling in the Broadway production of M. Butterfly. He starred as Dr. Lee on NBC series Awake from March to May 2012.
Wong was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Roberta Christine (née Leong), a telephone company supervisor, and William D. Wong. He is of Chinese descent. Wong attended Lincoln High School before attending San Francisco State University.
Wong gained attention for his Broadway debut in M. Butterfly opposite John Lithgow. The play won multiple awards, including several for Wong. He is notable as the only actor to be honored with the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award,Outer Critics Circle Award, Clarence Derwent Award, and Theatre World Award for the same role. In addition to his long-running stint on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as FBI psychiatrist Dr. George Huang, he has had recurring roles in All American Girl and as a prison priest on Oz, with guest appearances on The X-Files and Sesame Street. On the big screen, he has appeared in The Freshman (1990), the 1991 remake of Father of the Bride and its 1995 sequel, Father of the Bride Part II, Jurassic Park (1993), Executive Decision (1996) and Slappy and the Stinkers (1997). He also provided the voice of Captain Shang in Disney's Mulan (1998) and its direct-to-video sequel. He returned to Broadway as Linus in a revival of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, alongside Anthony Rapp, Roger Bart and Kristin Chenoweth, and the 2004 revival of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures. In 2008, he starred in the one-man show Herringbone, in which he portrays 11 roles, at the McCarter Theatre at Princeton University. He brought the show to the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego the following year.
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Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook (born October 25, 1927) is an American singer and actress who first came to prominence in the 1950s after starring in the original Broadway musicals Candide (1956) and The Music Man (1957) among others, winning a Tony Award for the latter. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid 1970s, when she began a second career that continues to this day as a cabaret and concert singer. She has also made numerous recordings.
During her years as Broadway’s leading ingénue Cook was lauded for her excellent lyric soprano voice. She was particularly admired for her vocal agility, wide range, warm sound, and emotive interpretations. As she has aged her voice has taken on a darker quality, even in her head voice, that was less prominent in her youth. Today Cook is widely recognized as one of the "premier interpreters" of musical theatre songs and standards, in particular the songs of composer Stephen Sondheim. Her subtle and sensitive interpretations of American popular song continue to earn high praise even into her eighties. She was named an honoree at the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors.
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Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, writer, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.
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Benny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. In 1958, he performed with Billie Holiday at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
The National Endowment for the Arts honored Benny Carter with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, winner of the Grammy Award in 1994 for his solo "Prelude to a Kiss", and also the same year, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2000 awarded the National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton.
Born in New York in 1907, the youngest of three children and the only boy, received his first music lessons on piano from his mother. Largely self-taught, by age fifteen, Carter was already sitting in at Harlem night spots. From 1924 to 1928, Carter gained valuable professional experience as a sideman in some of New York's top bands. As a youth, Carter lived in Harlem around the corner from Bubber Miley who was Duke Ellington's star trumpeter, Carter was inspired by Miley and bought a trumpet, but when he found he couldn't play like Miley he traded the trumpet in for a saxophone. For the next two years he played with such jazz greats as cornetist Rex Stewart, clarinetist-soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, pianists Earl Hines, Willie "The Lion" Smith, pianist Fats Waller, pianist James P. Johnson, pianist Duke Ellington and their various groups.
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Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters (born Bernadette Lazzara; February 28, 1948) is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings. She is one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway performers, having received nominations for seven Tony Awards, winning two, and nine Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
Regarded by many as the foremost interpreter of the works of Stephen Sondheim, Peters is particularly noted for her roles on the Broadway stage, including Mack and Mabel, Sunday in the Park with George, Song and Dance, Into the Woods and Annie Get Your Gun.
Peters first performed on the stage as a child and then a teenage actor in the 1960s, and in film and television in the 1970s. She was praised for this early work and for appearances on The Muppet Show, The Carol Burnett Show and in other television work, and for her roles in films like Silent Movie, The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven and Annie. In the 1980s, she returned to the theatre, where she became one of the best-known Broadway stars over the next three decades. She also has recorded six solo albums and several singles, as well as many cast albums, and performs regularly in her own solo concert act. Peters also continues to act in films and on television, where she has been nominated for three Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, winning once.
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Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht (German: [ˈbɛɐ̯tɔlt ˈbʁɛçt] (
listen); born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (help·info); 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.
An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble – the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife, long-time collaborator and actress Helene Weigel.
Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, (about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of Munich) to a conventionally-devout Protestant mother and a Catholic father (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914. Thanks to his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would impact on his writing throughout his life. From her, too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama. Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied. At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership, Neher designing many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helping to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.
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Beth Henley
Elizabeth Becker "Beth" Henley (born May 8, 1952) is an American dramatist and actress. She writes primarily about women's issues and family in the Southern United States. She is also a screenwriter who has written many film adaptations of her plays. She is known for her intertwining comic and serious moments in her pieces.
Her most famous play, Crimes of the Heart (1978), was her first produced professionally. It opened at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and then to the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1981), as well as the award for Best American Play of 1981 from the New York Drama Critics' Circle. The play also earned Henley a nomination for a Tony Award, and her screenplay adaptation for the 1986 film of the same name was nominated for an Oscar as Best Adapted Screenplay.
Henley adapted her 1984 play, The Miss Firecracker Contest, into a 1989 film starring Holly Hunter entitled Miss Firecracker. Henley's play Ridiculous Fraud was produced at the McCarter Theatre in 2006, and her play Family Week was produced at MCC Theater in 2010, directed by Jonathan Demme.
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Betty Comden
Betty Comden (May 3, 1917 – November 23, 2006) was one-half of the musical-comedy duo Comden and Green, who provided lyrics, libretti, and screenplays to some of the most beloved and successful Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century. Her writing partnership with Adolph Green lasted for six decades, during which time they collaborated with other leading entertainment figures such as the famed "Freed Unit" at MGM, Jule Styne and Leonard Bernstein.
Betty Comden was born Basya Cohen in New York City, attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, and studied drama at New York University. In 1938, mutual friends introduced her to Adolph Green, an aspiring actor. Along with the young Judy Holliday and Leonard Bernstein, Comden and Green formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Due to the act's success, the Revuers appeared in the 1944 film Greenwich Village, but their roles were so small they barely were noticed, and they quickly returned to New York.
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Billy Joel
William Martin "Billy" Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American pianist, singer-songwriter, and composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man," in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, according to the RIAA.
Joel had Top 40 hits in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, achieving 33 Top 40 hits in the United States, all of which he wrote himself. He is also a six-time Grammy Award winner, a 23-time Grammy nominee and has sold over 150 million records worldwide. He was inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame (1992), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1999), the Long Island Music Hall of Fame (2006), and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame (2009). In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's 50th anniversary, with Billy Joel positioned at No. 23. With the exception of the 2007 songs "All My Life" and "Christmas in Fallujah," Joel stopped recording pop/rock material after 1993's River of Dreams, but he continued to tour extensively until 2010.
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Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (22 June 1906 – 27 March 2002) was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. Wilder is one of only five people to have won Academy Awards as producer, director, and writer for the same film (The Apartment).
Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of Nazi Party, Wilder, who was Jewish, left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He relocated to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay to the screwball comedy Ninotchka. Wilder established his directorial reputation after helming Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir he co-wrote with mystery novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend, about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard.
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Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (
/ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965. However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.
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Bobby Steggert
Bobby Steggert (born March 2, 1981) is an American theatre, musical theatre, television, and film actor.
Bobby Steggert was born in Frederick, Maryland. He attended Frederick High School, and graduated in 1999 as valedictorian of his class.
Steggert graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, England
His brother, David, works at Walmac Farm in Lexington, KY.
Steggert joined the cast of the soap opera "All My Children" as Sam Grey (All My Children), from March 2005 until his final appearance on December 20, 2005.
After appearing in, among other Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, Master Harold ... and the Boys "A Christmas Carol," The New Group's The Music Teacher and columbinus at the New York Theater Workshop, Steggert starred as Jimmy Curry in the 2007 Broadway revival of the musical 110 in the Shade, a role which garnered him an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination.
Steggert then played the male lead in the 2008 musical The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island at the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan which garnered him both Drama Desk and Drama League Nominations for Best Supporting Actor.
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Brian Yorkey
Brian Yorkey is an American playwright, lyricist, and theatre director. He shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2009 Tony Award for Best Original Score with composer Tom Kitt, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Next to Normal.
A native of Issaquah, Washington, Yorkey graduated from Columbia University, where he served as the artistic director of the Varsity Show. He also is an alumnus of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.
Prior to bringing Next to Normal to Broadway, Yorkey was affiliated with Village Theatre, where he began as a KidStage student and eventually progressed to a six-year tenure as associate artistic director. Five musicals written by Yorkey - Funny Pages (1993), Making Tracks (2002), The Wedding Banquet (2003), Play it by Heart (2005), and A Perfect Fall (2007) - were staged there.
Next to Normal began as a ten-minute-long piece called Feeling Electric recent college graduates Yorkey and Kitt wrote as a final project for the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop at the end of the 1990s. Their inspiration was a segment about electroconvulsive therapy Yorkey saw on Dateline NBC. Yorkey has observed it's "exponentially harder to write an original musical. Musicals that go wrong can be ridiculous because it’s a ridiculous art form. People bursting into song can be ridiculous. But musicals that go right can be sublime."
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Bruce Johnston
Bruce Arthur Johnston (born Benjamin Baldwin on June 27, 1942) is a member of The Beach Boys and a songwriter, remembered especially for composing "I Write the Songs". Johnston was not one of the original members of the band. He joined the band on April 9, 1965 after Glen Campbell (who was substituting on stage for the group's chief song writer Brian Wilson) decided to embark on a solo career. Johnston's first vocal recording with the Beach Boys was "California Girls."
As a child Johnston was adopted by William and Irene Johnston of Chicago, and grew up on the West side of Los Angeles in Brentwood and Bel-Air. His adoptive father was president of the Owl Rexall Drug Company in Los Angeles after moving from Walgreens in Chicago. Johnston attended private school Bel-Air Town And Country School (later renamed John Thomas Dye School) in Los Angeles and also studied classical piano in his early years. In high school, Johnston switched to contemporary music. He performed in a few "beginning" bands during this time and then moved on to working with young musicians such as Sandy Nelson, Kim Fowley and Phil Spector. Soon Johnston began backing people such as Ritchie Valens, the Everly Brothers, and even Eddie Cochran. In 1959 while still in high school, Johnston arranged and played on his first hit record called "Teenbeat" by Sandy Nelson. The single record reached the Billboard Top Ten. The same year Johnston made his first single under his own name, "Take This Pearl" on Arwin Records (a record label owned by Doris Day) as part of the Bruce & Terry duo.
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Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel Jones CBE (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈbrɨn ˈtɛrvɛl]; born 9 November 1965) is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly Figaro and Leporello, but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner.
Bryn Terfel Jones was born in Pant Glas, North Wales, the son of a farmer. His first language is Welsh. He knew of another Welsh baritone named Bryn Jones, so chose Bryn Terfel as his professional name. He had an interest in and talent for music from a very young age. A family friend taught him how to sing, starting with traditional Welsh songs. After winning numerous competitions for his singing, he moved to London in 1984 and entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studied under Rudolf Piernay. (He has recorded that he initially applied to the music college in Cardiff but when the reply was addressed to ‘Miss Terfel’ he was so annoyed a Welsh College did not know Bryn was a man's name that he switched to London.) He graduated in 1989, winning both the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Award and the Gold Medal. The same year he came second behind Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the Cardiff BBC Singer of the World Competition, but won the Lieder Prize.
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Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC (born February 20, 1941) is a Canadian Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. She recorded one country album, I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again, in Nashville, and her Academy Award-winning "Up Where We Belong" is considered "pure pop".
She founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.
She was born Beverly Sainte-Marie in 1941 on the Piapot Cree Indian reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was orphaned and later adopted, growing up in Wakefield, Massachusetts with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, who were related to her biological parents. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees (BA 1963 and PhD 1983) in teaching and Oriental philosophy. and graduating in the top ten of her class.
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Burt Shevelove
Burt Shevelove (September 19, 1915 - April 8, 1982) was an American musical theater playwright, lyricist, librettist, and director. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he graduated from Brown University and Yale (Master's degree). At Brown in 1935, he acted in the first ever Brownbrokers musical titled Something Bruin. After serving as a volunteer ambulance driver in WWII, he began working as a writer, director and producer for radio and television. At the time of his death he had lived in London for many years.
His Broadway career started in 1948 with writing material, co-producing and directing for the revue Small Wonder. Among his successes were A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and No, No, Nanette, for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical.
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Cameron Mackintosh
Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh (born 17 October 1946) is a British theatrical producer notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals. At the height of his success in 1990, he was described as being "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world" by the New York Times. He is the producer of shows such as Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Mary Poppins, Martin Guerre, Miss Saigon and Cats.
Mackintosh was born in Enfield, London, the son of Diana Gladys (née Tonna), a production secretary, and Ian Robert Mackintosh, a timber merchant and jazz trumpeter. His father was Scottish and his mother, a native of Malta, was of Maltese and French descent. Mackintosh was raised in his mother's Roman Catholic faith[citation needed] and educated at Prior Park College in Bath.
He first knew that he wanted to become a theatre producer after his aunt took him to a matinee of the Julian Slade musical Salad Days when he was 8 years old.
Mackintosh began his theatre career in his late teens, as a stagehand at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, graduating to stage manager on several touring productions. Before long, he began producing his own small scale tours before becoming a London-based producer in the 1970s. His early London productions included Anything Goes (which closed after only two weeks), Side By Side By Sondheim, The Card, My Fair Lady and Tom Foolery.
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Carol Hall
Carol Hall is an American composer and lyricist, born in Abilene, Texas.
Hall is best known for composing the music and lyrics for the Broadway stage musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1978, adapted as a film in 1982). Her other major works include the unsuccessful Broadway sequel The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public (1994), as well as the stage play To Whom It May Concern (c. 1986).[1]
Hall's career includes singing in clubs and similar venues. She signed to Elektra Records as a singer-sngwriter and had two albums released on the label in the early 1970s, If I Be Your Lady and Beads and Feathers. [2]
Hall appeared also on the LP Free to Be… You and Me (1972) and the 1974 television special based on the album, having written the songs "Parents Are People," "It's All Right To Cry," and "Glad To Have A Friend Like You."
For the 1977 duet album of Tony Bennett and Bill Evans, entitled Together Again, Hall co-wrote the number "The Two Lonely People."
For Sesame Street, Hall along with Sam Pottle co-wrote the song "A Very Simple Dance" (1974).
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Carole King
Carole King (born February 9, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, her Tapestry album topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971, and remained on the charts for more than six years.
She was most successful as a performer in the first half of the 1970s, although she was a successful songwriter long before and long after. She had her first number 1 hit as a songwriter in 1961 at age 18, with "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", which she wrote with Goffin. In 1997, she co-wrote "The Reason" for Aerosmith, but instead it was sung by Celine Dion.
In 2000, Joel Whitburn, a Billboard Magazine pop music researcher, named her the most successful female songwriter of 1955–99, because she wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100.
King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry. Her most recent non-compilation album is Live at the Troubadour, a collaboration with James Taylor, which reached number 4 on the charts in its first week, and has sold over 600,000 copies.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones
Catherine Zeta-Jones, CBE, ( /ˈziːtə/; born Catherine Zeta Jones; 25 September 1969) is a Welsh actress. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of United Kingdom and United States television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as the 1998 action film The Mask of Zorro and the 1999 crime thriller film Entrapment. Her breakthrough role was in the 2000 film Traffic, for which she earned her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.
Zeta-Jones subsequently starred as Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of the musical Chicago, a critical and commercial success, and received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Later, she appeared in the 2003 romantic comedy film Intolerable Cruelty and 2004 crime comedy film Ocean's Twelve. Zeta-Jones starred in the 2005 sequel of the 1998 film, The Legend of Zorro. She also starred in the 2008 biopic romantic thriller Death Defying Acts. In 2010, she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Desiree in A Little Night Music.
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Charles Fuller
Charles H. Fuller, Jr. (born 5 March 1939) is an American playwright, best known for his play, A Soldier's Play, for which he received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Fuller was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1939, the son of Charles H. Fuller, Sr. and Lillian Anderson. He attended Roman Catholic High School and then Villanova University (1956–1958), then joined the U.S. Army in 1959, serving in Japan and South Korea. He left the army in 1962, and later studied at La Salle University (1965–1967), earning a DFA. He co-founded the Afro-American Arts Theatre Philadelphia
Fuller vowed to become a writer after noticing that his high school's library had no books by African American authors. He achieved critical notice in 1969 with The Village: A Party, a drama about racial tensions between a group of mixed-race couples. He later wrote plays for the Henry Street Settlement theatre and the Negro Ensemble Company in New York, who have performed several of his plays. His 1975 play The Brownsville Raid is based on the Brownsville Affair, an altercation between black soldiers and white civilians in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906, which led to an entire black regiment being dishonorably discharged though later pardoned in 1976.
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Charlie Smalls
Charlie Smalls (October 25, 1943 in Queens, New York – August 27, 1987 in Belgium) was an African-American composer and songwriter, best known for writing the music for the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz.
A musical prodigy, Smalls attended the Juilliard School at age eleven in 1954, staying until 1961. In 1968, he appeared on the "Some Like It Lukewarm" episode of The Monkees (episode #56, original airdate March 4, 1968), chatting at a piano with singer Davy Jones. He wrote a song for John Cassavetes's 1968 film Faces called "Never Felt Like This Before". He also wrote the score for the 1976 film, Drum. He also wrote the song "From Me To You" for the Hugh Masekela 1966 albumHugh Masekela's Next Album.
After graduating from the High School of Performing Arts, Smalls toured as a member of the New York Jazz Repertory Company before beginning work on The Wiz. An African-American retelling of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Wiz was adapted into a feature film, starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, by Motown Productions and Universal Pictures in 1978.
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Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes. He also is well known for his roles in the films The Greatest Show on Earth and Touch of Evil.
Heston was also known for his political activism. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. Initially a moderate Democrat, he later supported conservative Republican policies and was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.
Heston was born John Charles Carter, the son of Lilla (née Charlton; 1899–1994) and Russell Whitford Carter (1897–1966), a sawmill operator. Most sources state that he was born in Evanston, Illinois. Heston's autobiography, however, and some other sources place his birth in No Man's Land, Illinois, which usually refers to a then-unincorporated area now part of Wilmette, a wealthy northern suburb of Chicago. Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood.
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Chip Zien
Chip Zien (born Jerome Herbert Zien; March 20, 1947) is an American actor. He is best known for playing the lead role of the Baker in the original Broadway production of Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. Later he played the role of Buzz Richards in Applause at City Center Encores!, Thénardier in the Broadway production of Les Misérables and in the films Howard the Duck as Howard and United 93 as Mark Rothenberg.
Zien was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from Whitefish Bay High School and later from the University of Pennsylvania. There, he was the President of Mask & Wig, the nation's oldest all-male collegiate musical comedy troupe.
Zien's first major role was as Marvin in William Finn's first musical, In Trousers. In its sequels, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, this role was played by Michael Rupert, while Zien played Mendel, a role he reprised when these two one-act musicals were joined together and played Broadway as Falsettos. Several years later, Zien was featured in another Finn musical when he played a bizarre children's show host called Mr. Bungee in A New Brain. He also starred on Broadway in Grand Hotel (as Otto Kringelein), The Boys from Syracuse (as Dromio of Ephesus), The Suicide (as Victor Victorovich), Into the Woods (as the Baker) and Ride the Winds (as Inari). He provided the voice of the title character in George Lucas' Howard the Duck.
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Christopher Bond
Christopher Godfrey Bond (born 1945) is a British playwright whose 1973 retelling of the Victorian tale Sweeney Todd formed the basis of Stephen Sondheim's musical of the same name, with book by Hugh Wheeler. He currently lives in West Cornwall.
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Christopher Hampton
Christopher James Hampton, CBE, FRSL (born 26 January 1946) is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement.
Hampton was born in Faial, Azores, to British parents Dorothy Patience (née Herrington) and Bernard Patrick Hampton, a marine telecommunications engineer for Cable & Wireless. His father's job led the family to subsequently settle in Aden and Alexandria in Egypt and later Hong Kong and Zanzibar. The Suez Crisis in 1956 necessitated that the family flee under cover of darkness, leaving their possessions behind.
After a prep school at Reigate, Hampton went to the independent boarding school Lancing College at the age of 13, where he won house colours for boxing and distinguished himself as a sergeant in the CCF. Fellow dramatist David Hare was a school contemporary; poet Harry Guest was a teacher.
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Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike most successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote both the lyrics and the music for his songs.
After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate.
Porter's other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes and Can-Can, and his numerous hit songs include "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was noted for his sophisticated, suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms.
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Danielle Ferland
Danielle Ferland (b. January 31, 1971 in Derby, Connecticut) is an American actress and singer.
Ferland attended Bunnell High School in Stratford, CT from 1983–1987 and attended New York University.
She made her Broadway debut at age 13 as Louise in Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George (1984). She next appeared off-Broadway in Paradise! (1985). In 1987 she was the singing child star in Woody Allen's Radio Days. She returned to Broadway, originating the role of Little Red Riding Hood in the 1987 musical Into the Woods. For her performance in Into the Woods she received the 1988 Theatre World Award and also was nominated for the 1988 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical.
Other credits include The Crucible (1991), Fredrika in A Little Night Music Lincoln Center Revival in 1991, Uncommon Women and Others (1994), Tartuffe at the Delacorte Theatre in 1999, A Year with Frog and Toad (2003), Engaged (2004),She Stoops to Conquer at the Irish Repertory Company in 2005, the concert and recording of the York Theatre production of Summer of '42 (2006),Like Love, New York Music Festival, 2007 and All My Sons (2008).
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David Belasco
David Belasco (July 25, 1853 – May 14, 1931) was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright.
Born in San Francisco, California, where his Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from London, England, during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs, such as call boy and script copier.
He eventually was given the opportunity to act and serve as a stage manager, learning the business inside out. A gifted playwright, Belasco went to New York City in 1882 where he worked as stage manager for the Madison Square Theatre, and then the old Lyceum Theatre while writing plays. By 1895, he was so successful that he set himself up as an independent producer.
During his long creative career, stretching between 1884 and 1930, Belasco either wrote, directed, or produced more than 100 Broadway plays including Hearts of Oak, The Heart of Maryland, and Du Barry, making him the most powerful personality on the New York city theater scene. Although he is perhaps most famous for having adapted the short story "Madame Butterfly" into a play with the same name and for penning The Girl of the Golden West for the stage, both of which were adapted as operas by Giacomo Puccini. More than forty motion pictures have been made from the many plays he authored, including Buster Keaton's Seven Chances.
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David Hyde Pierce
David Hyde Pierce (born April 3, 1959) is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for playing the psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier, for which he won four Emmy Awards during the series' run.
Pierce, the youngest of four siblings, was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, the son of Laura Marie (née Hughes) and George Hyde Pierce, an insurance agent and aspiring actor. He has three older siblings: Barbara, Nancy, and Thomas, and adapted his name as an adult.
As a child, Pierce became very interested in the piano and frequently played organ at the local Bethesda Episcopal Church in Saratoga Springs. He began acting while in high school, earning recognition as best Dramatic Arts student. In 1977, Pierce received the Yaddo Medal for character and scholarship and worked in theater while a counselor at Camp Kabeyun in New Hampshire. However, his love of music was still strong, so he decided to study classical piano at Yale University. However, Pierce soon grew bored with music history lessons and found that he wasn’t dedicated enough to practice the required number of hours to become a successful concert pianist. Instead, he graduated in 1981 with a double major in English and Theatre Arts.
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David Ives
David Ives (Chicago, July 11, 1950 – ) is a contemporary American playwright. A native of South Chicago, Ives attended a minor Catholic seminary and Northwestern University and, after some years' interval, Yale School of Drama, where he received an MFA in playwriting. In the interval between studies at Northwestern and Yale he worked for three years as an editor at Foreign Affairs magazine.
In the mid-1990s, after having been a contributor to Spy Magazine, Ives wrote occasional humor pieces for the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and other publications. In that same period, New York magazine named him one of the "100 Smartest New Yorkers".
Ives' first play in New York was Canvas, staged at the Circle Repertory Company in 1972, followed at the same theatre by Saint Freud in 1975. In the late 1980s, his one-act comedies began to appear annually in the Manhattan Punch Line's yearly one-act play festival, among them: Sure Thing, Words, Words, Words, Variations on the Death of Trotsky, Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread, and The Universal Language. Ives' most popular book of plays is All in the Timing, which originated as an evening of one-act comedies that premiered at Primary Stages in 1993, moved to the larger John Houseman Theatre, and ran for 606 performances. The production won him the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for Playwriting.
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David Lindsay-Abaire
David Lindsay-Abaire (born November 30, 1969) is an American playwright and lyricist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007 for his play Rabbit Hole, which also earned several Tony Award nominations.
Lindsay-Abaire was born David Abaire in South Boston, Massachusetts in a family of five which he describes as "very blue collar." His mother was a factory worker and his father worked for the Chelsea fruit market. He attended Boston public schools until the seventh grade, when he received a six-year scholarship to Milton Academy, a New England prep school. It was there that he first became interested in writing for the theatre. He contributed what he has called "terrible, terrible plays" as a result of the school's tradition of presenting original student work.
He went on to concentrate in theatre at Sarah Lawrence College, where he graduated in 1992. He was accepted into the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School, where he wrote under the tutelage of playwrights Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang from 1996 to 1998.
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David Mamet
David Alan Mamet ( /ˈmæmɨt/; born November 30, 1947) is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.
Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984). He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997). Mamet's books include: The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, a commentary on the movie business.
Mamet was born in 1947 in Chicago to Jewish parents, Lenore June (Silver), a teacher, and Bernard Morris Mamet, an attorney. One of his first jobs was as a busboy at Chicago's The Second City. He was educated at the progressive Francis W. Parker School and at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.
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David Zippel
David Joel Zippel (born May 17, 1954) is an American musical theatre lyricist.
Zippel was born in Easton, Pennsylvania. He is a 1976 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. While there, he wrote a "bizarre political musical" called Rotunda. He had intended on going to Harvard Law School to become a theatrical lawyer, but when he met Wally Harper (at the time Barbara Cook's accompanist and was in need of a lyricist, Zippel offered his services. Two of the songs they wrote together were used when Cook sang at Carnegie Hall. According to his official biography, "he is delighted not to practice law."[citation needed]
He also wrote the theme song to Veronica's Closet.
His theatrical credits include:
Zippel contributed lyrics to The Swan Princess (music by Lex de Azevedo, the song Far Longer than Forever was nominated for a Golden Globe Award), as well as provided the singing voice of Jean-Bob the Frog, and more notably wrote the lyrics for the Disney films Hercules, with music by Alan Menken (the song "Go the Distance" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song) and Mulan, with music by Matthew Wilder. The music and lyrics received an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical or Comedy Score. A year later, Zippel collaborated with Phil Collins for Tarzan. He was in his agent Richard Kraft's film Finding Kraftland.
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Debra Monk
Debra Monk (born February 27, 1949) is an American actress, singer, and writer.
Monk was born in Middletown, Ohio. She was voted "best personality" by the graduating class at Wheaton High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. She graduated from Frostburg State University in 1973. In 1975, Monk received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
"Pump Boys & Dinettes" was an Off Broadway musical!
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Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( /ɡɨˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and, occasionally, singer.
Allmusic's Scott Yanow wrote, "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated . . . Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time."
Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.
In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis and Chuck Mangione.
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Don Black (lyricist)
Don Black, OBE (born 21 June 1938) is an English lyricist. His works have included numerous musicals, movie themes and hit songs. He has provided lyrics for John Barry, Charles Strouse, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Quincy Jones, Jule Styne, Henry Mancini, Michael Jackson, Elmer Bernstein, Michel Legrand, Hayley Westenra, A. R. Rahman, Marvin Hamlisch and Debbie Wiseman.
Black was born Gerald Blackstone in London, England, the youngest of five children of Russian Jewish immigrants Morris and Betsy (née Kersh) Blackstone. During his childhood the family lived in a flat in Tornay House, Shore Place, South Hackney.
He began his music industry career as an office boy with a music publishing firm, and later worked as a song-plugger. He also had a brief spell as a comic.
He was personal manager to the singer Matt Monro for many years and also provided songs for him (usually writing English language lyrics to continental songs). These included "Walk Away" (music: Udo Jürgens) and "For Mamma" (music: Charles Aznavour).
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Donald L. Coburn
Donald L. Coburn (born 4 August 1938) is an American dramatist. He received the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, The Gin Game.
Coburn was born in Baltimore, Maryland to parents who divorced two years later. He graduated from high school in 1957, then served in the U.S. Navy from 1958 to 1960. He has been married twice, first to Nazle Joyce French, whom he married in 1964 and divorced in 1971, then to Marsha Woodruff Maher in 1975. He had his own advertising company from 1965 to 1968. He then worked for the Stanford Advertising Agency in Dallas, Texas from 1968 to 1971. He worked as a marketing consultant from 1973 to 1976.
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Donald Margulies
Donald Margulies (born September 2, 1954) (MARG-yoo-leez) is an American playwright and a professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale University. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2000 for his play, Dinner With Friends.
Other notable works include Time Stands Still (2009); Shipwrecked! An Entertainment — The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself) (2007), Brooklyn Boy (2004), Sight Unseen (1991) and Collected Stories (1996), the last three of which were commissioned and originally produced by South Coast Repertory. "Sight Unseen" (which won a 1992 OBIE Award for Best American Play and the Dramatists' Guild/Hull-Warriner Award) and "Collected Stories" were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in 1992 and 1997, respectively.
"Dinner With Friends" was commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville [KY], where it had its world premiere at the 1998 Humana Festival of New American Plays. It was produced later that year at South Coast Repertory [Costa Mesa, CA], and opened November 4, 1999 at the Variety Arts Theatre [New York] where it played 654 performances. In addition to the Pulitzer, "Dinner with Friends" received an American Theatre Critics’ Association New Play Citation, The Dramatists’ Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award nomination, and was selected a Burns Mantle Best Play of 1999-2000). It went on to have a long run in Paris at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees, and productions in cities all over the world including London, Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Tokyo, Mumbai, Seoul, Tel Aviv and Istanbul. In 2001 it was an Emmy Award-nominated film for HBO.
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Douglas Furber
Douglas Furber (13 May 1885 – 20 February 1961) was a British lyricist and playwright.
Furber is best known for the lyrics to the 1937 song The Lambeth Walk and the libretto to the musical Me and My Girl, composed by Noel Gay, from which it came. This show made broadcasting history when in 1939 it became the first full length musical to be broadcast on television. A 1986 revival went on to achieve great acclaim, and was nominated for Tony awards for both Best Score and Best Book.
Furber made his first entry into song writing with the Australian born composer A. Emmett Adams. Following a visit to St. Mary's Church, Southampton, England in 1914, the two wrote The Bells of St. Mary's. The song was published in 1917 This became a major hit in America, in 1917, despite having been originally rejected by the publishers. In 1945, Bing Crosby had a hit with The Bells of St. Mary's after it was used as the title song to the film of the same name.
Other hits include Limehouse Blues from 1924, written with composer Philip Braham.
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Duncan Sheik
Duncan Scott Sheik (born November 18, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Sheik initially found success as a singer, most notably for his 1996 debut single "Barely Breathing". He later expanded his work to include compositions for motion pictures and the Broadway stage, leading him to involvement in the multiple award-winning musical Spring Awakening. He resides in New York City.
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Sheik's upbringing was split between his grandparents' home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and his parents' in New Jersey. His grandmother, a graduate of Juilliard, taught him to play the piano and encouraged his musical development. He has a younger brother, Peter, and a younger sister, Kacie, who is a theatre actress. Sheik graduated from the Eaglebrook School before attending Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1988. He subsequently studied semiotics at Brown University. After college, he moved to Daly City, a suburb near San Francisco where he started his music career.
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Dyan Cannon
Dyan Cannon (born Samille Diane Friesen on January 4, 1937) is an American film and television actress, director, screenwriter, editor, and producer.
Cannon was born in Tacoma, Washington. Her mother Claire (née Portnoy) was a homemaker; Cannon's father Ben sold life insurance. Cannon was raised in the Jewish faith of her mother, who had emigrated from Russia; Dyan's father was Baptist. She attended West Seattle High School.
Cannon made her screen debut in 1960 in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond; however her small screen debut was in the late 1950s including a guest appearance on Bat Masterson in 1959, in the episode entitled "Lady Luck". She also made a 1959 guest appearance on Wanted: Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen in episode 54 "Vanishing Act" as Nicole McCready. Another role was as Mona Elliott, with fellow guest star Franchot Tone, in the episode "The Man Behind the Man" of the 1964 CBS drama, The Reporter, with Harry Guardino in the title role. She also made appearances on 77 Sunset Strip, the perennial western series Gunsmoke, The Untouchables and the syndicated Two Faces West in the 1960 episode entitled "Sheriff of the Town".
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Ed Dixon
Ed Dixon (born September 2, 1948 in Oklahoma) is an American character actor, playwright and composer.
Dixon has appeared in numerous Broadway shows, including No, No, Nanette, King of Schnorrers, The Three Musketeers, Les Misérables (the show's 2nd and longest running Thenardier), Cyrano, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Iceman Cometh, The Best Man, How the Grinch Stole Christmas , Sunday in the Park with George and "Mary Poppins". In 1987 he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his performance in the musical Shylock, for which he wrote the book, music, and lyrics.
Dixon was also a soloist in the Kennedy Center's premiere production of Leonard Bernstein's Mass and is on the recording conducted by the composer.He can also be heard on the cast recording of the 2001 national tour of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Dixon toured as the Governor opposite Ann-Margaret as Miss Mona and Gary Sandy as Ed Earl Dodd. He won the 2010 Helen Hayes Award for best supporting actor in a musical for his turn as Max in Sunset Blvd .
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Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III ( /ˈɔːlbiː/ AWL-bee; born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and a rewrite of the book for the unsuccessful musical version of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1966). His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee continues to experiment in new works, such as The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? (2002).
According to Magill's Survey of American Literature (2007), Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia (the popular belief is that he was born in Washington, D.C.). He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. Here the young Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. His adoptive mother, Reed's third wife, Frances tried to raise Albee to fit into their social circles.
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Edward Villella
Edward Villella (born October 1, 1936, Bayside), New York, is a danseur and choreographer, frequently cited as America's most celebrated male dancer at the time.
Villella enrolled in the School of American Ballet at age ten, but then interrupted his studies to complete his college education. He attended the New York Maritime Academy, where he lettered in baseball and was a championship boxer. He graduated with a marine science degree in 1959, and rejoined the School of American Ballet.
Villella became a member of the New York City Ballet in 1957, rising to soloist in 1958 and principal dancer in 1960. Among his most noteworthy performances were Oberon in George Balanchine's ballet A Midsummer Night's Dream (with music by Felix Mendelssohn), Tarantella, Rubies in the Balanchine ballet Jewels, and Prodigal Son.
Villella was the first American male dancer to appear with the Royal Danish Ballet, and the only American ever asked to dance an encore at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. He danced at the inaugural for President John F. Kennedy, and performed for Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. He won an Emmy Award in 1975 for his CBS television production of Harlequinade. He danced in two television versions of The Nutcracker (in different roles), in a ballet film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in a 1966 TV production of Brigadoon, in which he played the tragic suitor Harry Beaton. During the 1960s he and his dancing partner Patricia McBride, who starred together in a 1965 television version of The Nutcracker, appeared often on the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1973, Villella appeared as himself in an episode of The Odd Couple titled "Last Tango in Newark" during which he said (much to Felix's dismay) that he always wanted to be a professional football player; his son, Roddy, also appeared. In 1983, Villella guest-starred on the soap opera Guiding Light.
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Elaine Stritch
Elaine Stritch (born February 2, 1925) is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs. She is known for her performance of "The Ladies Who Lunch" in Stephen Sondheim's 1970 musical Company, her 2001 one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, and recently for her role as Jack Donaghy's mother Colleen on NBC's 30 Rock. She has been nominated for the Tony Award five times in various categories, and won once, for Elaine Stritch at Liberty. Stritch is also a three-time Emmy Award winner.
Elaine Stritch was born in 1925 in Detroit, Michigan to Mildred (née Jobe; 1893-1987), a homemaker, and George Joseph Stritch (1892-1987), an executive with B.F. Goodrich. Her family was wealthy and devoutly Roman Catholic. Stritch's father was of Irish descent and her mother was of Welsh descent. Samuel Cardinal Stritch, former Archbishop of Chicago, was one of her uncles.
Stritch trained at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City under Erwin Piscator; other students at the Dramatic Workshop at this time included Marlon Brando and Bea Arthur.
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Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriter partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date.
In his four-decade career John has sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. His single "Candle in the Wind 1997" has sold over 33 million copies worldwide, and is the best selling single in Billboard history. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 US albums, 56 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won six Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him Number 49 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Having been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996, John received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music and charitable services" in 1998.
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Eric Idle
Eric Idle (born 29 March 1943) is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, writer, and comedic composer. He was a member of the British surreal comedy group Monty Python, a member of the The Rutles on Saturday Night Live, and the author of the Broadway musical Spamalot.
Idle was born in South Shields, County Durham (now Tyne and Wear) in Harton Village, the son of Nora Barron (née Sanderson), a health visitor, and Ernest Idle. His father served in the Royal Air Force and survived World War II, only to be killed in a hitch-hiking accident when Idle was only two years old. His mother had difficulty coping with a full-time job and raising a child, so when Idle was seven, she enrolled him into the Royal Wolverhampton School as a boarder. At this time the school was a charitable foundation dedicated to the education and maintenance of children who had lost one or both parents. Idle is quoted as saying: "It was a physically abusive, bullying, harsh environment for a kid to grow up in. I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority. Perfect training for Python."
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Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman (January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984) was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "Some People", "Rose's Turn", "I Get a Kick Out of You", "It's De-Lovely", "Friendship", "You're the Top", "Anything Goes", and "There's No Business Like Show Business", which later became her theme song.
Merman was born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann in her maternal grandmother's house located at 265 4th Street in Astoria, Queens, in New York City in 1908, though she would later emphatically declare that it was actually 1912. Her father, Edward Zimmermann (1879–1977), was an accountant with James H. Dunham & Company, a Manhattan wholesale dry-goods company, and her mother, Agnes (née Gardner; 1883–1974), was a school teacher. Zimmermann had been raised in the Dutch Reformed Church and his wife was Presbyterian, but shortly after they were wed they joined the Episcopalian congregation at Church of the Redeemer, where Merman was baptized. Her parents were strict about church attendance, and every Sunday she spent the day there, first at morning services, followed by Sunday school, an afternoon prayer meeting, and an evening study group for children.
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Ettore Scola
Ettore Scola (born 10 May 1931) is an Italian screenwriter and film director. He was born in Trevico, province of Avellino (Campania).
He entered the film industry as a screenwriter in 1953, and directed his first film, Let's Talk About Women, in 1964. In 1974 Scola enjoyed international success with We All Loved Each Other So Much (C'eravamo tanto amati), a wide fresco of post-World War II Italy life and politics, dedicated to fellow director Vittorio De Sica. In 1976 he won the Prix de la mise en scène at Cannes Film Festival for Brutti, sporchi e cattivi.
Since then Ettore Scola has made several successful films, including A Special Day (1977), That Night In Varennes (1982), What Time Is It? (1989) and Captain Fracassa's Journey (1990). Ettore Scola has directed close to 40 films in some 40 years, and he is still active.
His film Passione d'amore, adapted from a nineteenth-century novel, was adapted by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine into the award-winning musical Passion.
In 1988 he was a member of the jury at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.
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Fayard Nicholas
Fayard Antonio Nicholas (October 20, 1914 – January 24, 2006) was an American choreographer, dancer and actor. He, along with his brother Harold, made up the Nicholas Brothers tap-dance duo who starred in the MGM musicals An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935), Stormy Weather (1943), The Pirate (1948), The Five Heartbeats (1991) and Hard Four (2007). Fayard Nicholas was a member of the Bahá'í Faith.
Fayard was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2001, along with his brother Harold Nicholas.
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Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra, /sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor.
Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.
He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".
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Franke Previte
Franke Jon Previte is a composer who grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
He was with the New Jersey rock quintet Franke and the Knockouts as the singer and songwriter. Previously he had sung with the Oxford Watch Band and the heavy metal band Bull Angus. Franke and the Knockouts were signed by Millennium Records in 1981 and had three U.S. Top 40 singles and two Top 50 albums. Franke and the Knockouts' biggest single, "Sweetheart" was written by Previte and Knockout guitarist Billy Elworthy and became a Top 10 hit in 1981. The group's other two Top 40 hits were "You're My Girl" and "Without You (Not Another Lonely Night)". The band switched to Music Corporation of America in 1984, but they split up around 1986. Franke Previte co-wrote music for the hit soundtrack to the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing. He has a sister who is a Ph.D. scientist in the pharmaceutical industry.
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Fred Ebb
Fred Ebb (April 8, 1928 – September 11, 2004) was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.
Ebb was born in Manhattan to a Jewish family, the son of Anna Evelyn (née Gritz) and Harry Ebb. He worked during the early 1950s bronzing baby shoes, as a trucker's assistant, and was also employed in a department store credit office and at a hosiery company. He graduated from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, and also earned his Master’s Degree in English from Columbia University.
One of his early collaborators was Phil Springer, and a song they wrote together ("I Never Loved Him Anyhow") was recorded by Carmen McRae in 1956. Another song Ebb wrote with Springer was "Heartbroken" (1953), which was recorded by Judy Garland, the mother of his future protégée, Liza Minnelli. Other Springer-Ebb tunes include "Moonlight Gambler" and "Nevertheless I Never Lost the Blues". "Don't Forget", which he wrote with Norman Leyden, was recorded by singer Eddy Arnold in 1954.
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Frederick Loewe
Frederick Loewe (/ˈloʊ/, originally German Friedrich (Fritz) Löwe [ˈløːvə]; June 10, 1901 – February 14, 1988), was an Austrian-American composer. He collaborated with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on the long running Broadway musicals My Fair Lady and Camelot, with book and lyrics by Lerner, both of which were made into films.
Loewe was born in Berlin, Germany, to Viennese parents Edmond and Rosa Loewe. His father was a noted Jewish operetta star who performed throughout Europe and in North and South America; he starred as Count Danilo in the original production of The Merry Widow.
Frederick Loewe grew up in Berlin and attended a Prussian cadet school from the age of five until he was thirteen. At an early age Loewe learned to play piano by ear and helped his father rehearse, and he began composing songs at age seven. He eventually attended a music conservatory in Berlin, one year behind virtuoso Claudio Arrau, and studied with Ferruccio Busoni and Eugene d'Albert. He won the coveted Hollander Medal awarded by the school and gave performances as a concert pianist while still in Germany. At 13, he was the youngest piano soloist ever to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic.
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Galt MacDermot
Galt MacDermot (born December 18, 1928) is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song "African Waltz" in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair (1967; its cast album also won a Grammy) and Two Gentlemen of Verona (1971). MacDermot has also written music for film soundtracks, jazz and funk albums, and classical music, and his music has been sampled in hit hip-hop songs and albums.
MacDermot was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of a Canadian diplomat. He was educated at Upper Canada College and Bishop's University (Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada). He received a Bachelor of Music from Cape Town University, South Africa and made a study of African music his specialty. He also studied the piano privately with Neil Chotem.
MacDermot won his first Grammy Award for the Cannonball Adderley recording of his song "African Waltz" (the title track of the album of the same name) in 1960. He moved to New York City in 1964 where, three years later, he wrote the music for the hit musical Hair, which he later adapted for the 1979 film. Its Broadway cast album won a Grammy Award in 1969. His next musicals were Isabel's a Jezebel (1970) and Who the Murderer Was (1970), which featured British progressive rock band Curved Air. MacDermot had another hit with the musical Two Gentlemen of Verona (1971), which won the Tony Award for Best Musical. For that show, MacDermot was nominated for a Tony for best music and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music. His later musicals, however, including Dude and Via Galactica (both 1973) and The Human Comedy (1984), have not been successful on Broadway.
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George Abbott
George Francis Abbott (June 25, 1887 – January 31, 1995) was an American theater producer and director, playwright, screenwriter, and film director and producer whose career spanned more than nine decades.
Abbott was born in Forestville, New York, and later moved to the town of Salamanca, which twice elected his father mayor. In 1898, his family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he attended Kearney Military Academy. Within a few years, his family returned to New York, and he graduated from Hamburg High School in 1907. Four years later, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester, where he wrote his first play, Perfectly Harmless, for the University Dramatic Club.
Abbott then went to Harvard University, where he studied playwriting under George Pierce Baker. Under his tutelage, he wrote The Head of the Family, which was performed at the Harvard Dramatic Club in 1912. He then worked for a year as assistant stage manager at the Bijou Theatre in Boston, where his play The Man in the Manhole won a contest.
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George Furth
George Furth (December 14, 1932 – August 11, 2008) was an American librettist, playwright, and actor.
Furth was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Evelyn (née Tuerk) and George Schweinfurth. He majored in drama & theatre at Northwestern University and received his master's degree from Columbia University.
He made his Broadway debut as an actor in the 1961 play A Cook for Mr. General, followed by the musical Hot Spot two years later. He was also known for his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim: the highly successful Company, the ill-fated Merrily We Roll Along and the (equally ill-fated) drama, Getting Away with Murder. Furth penned the plays Twigs, The Supporting Cast, and Precious Sons, and wrote the book for the Kander and Ebb musical, The Act.
One of Furth's last writing projects was a foray into an area where he had not previously endeavored. Furth penned the lyrics for a musical revue, with music by Doug Katsaros. Furth and Katsaros shaped the work with San Francisco director Mike Ward into "The End-a new musical revue". The piece was performed at San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Center during the summer of 2004 and was billed as a "Pre-U.S. Tour Workshop Production". The piece was reworked twice, with the title changing to Last Call and Happy Hour, respectively.
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George Hearn
George Hearn (born June 18, 1934) is an American actor and singer, primarily in Broadway musical theatre.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Hearn studied philosophy at Southwestern at Memphis, now Rhodes College before he embarked on a career in the theater, training for the stage with actress turned acting coach Irene Dailey. Most of Hearn's early performances were in traditional productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival and theaters at Lincoln Center.
Hearn's career began in 1963 when he played Sir Dinidan in a national tour of Camelot with Biff McGuire and Jeannie Carson, standing by for McGuire, who played King Arthur. He first garnered a notice as John Dickinson in the acclaimed 1969 musical 1776 and as Liv Ullmann's leading man in the musical version of I Remember Mama (1979).
On March 4, 1980 he replaced Len Cariou in the title role of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd opposite Dorothy Loudon. Later in 1980 Hearn and the show's original star, Angela Lansbury, headed the show's touring company, then reprised their roles for a Showtime production of the musical, which won him an Emmy Award for his portrayal.
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George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman (November 16, 1889 – June 2, 1961) was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers. One play and one musical that he wrote won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama: You Can't Take It With You (1937, with Moss Hart), and Of Thee I Sing (1932, with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin). He also won the Tony Award as a Director, for the musical Guys and Dolls.
Born to a Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he graduated from high school in 1907 and "tried law school for three months" but grew disenchanted and took on a series of odd jobs, including "selling hatbands". Kaufman then began his career as a journalist and drama critic; he was the drama editor for The New York Times from 1917 through 1930. Kaufman took his editorial responsibilities very seriously. According to legend, on one occasion a press agent asked: "How do I get our leading lady’s name in the Times?" Kaufman: "Shoot her."
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George Stiles
George William Stiles (born 9 August 1961) is an English composer of musicals for stage and screen.
From 1974 to 1979, he was educated at Gresham's School, in Norfolk. In 1983 Stiles graduated in music at Exeter University, where performance in organ formed part of his final examinations.
With Anthony Drewe, Stiles has written four shows (see below) and also contributed to Mary Poppins. Frost at Midnight, Dave, A Private Function and Soho Cinders are all in development, many of which were showcased at Her Majesty's Theatre In London on 6 July 2008.
Tutankhamun was performed at the Northcott Theatre and Imagination Buildings.
Just So was produced by Cameron Mackintosh at the Watermill and Tricycle Theatres in the UK and at the Goodspeed Opera House and North Shore Music Theatre in the United States. It won the 1985 Vivian Ellis Prize, and Steven Spielberg secured an option to turn it into a feature animation.
Honk! was commissioned by the Watermill Theatre (1993), and was developed at the Stephen Joseph Theatre (1997) and London's Royal National Theatre (1999). It won three Best Musical awards - the 2000 Laurence Olivier Award, the FNB VITA Award in South Africa, and the Elliot Norton Award in the United States. The National Theatre production toured the UK in 2001. It is frequently produced by schools and community theatre groups.
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Gerard Alessandrini
Gerard Alessandrini (born November 27, 1953) is an American playwright, parodist, actor and theatre director best known for creating the award-winning off-Broadway musical theatre parody revue Forbidden Broadway. He is the recipient of Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, an Obie Award, four Drama Desk Awards (including the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the Drama Desk Special Award), an Outer Critics Circle Award, and two Lucille Lortel Awards, as well as the Drama League Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
Alessandrini was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in suburban Needham. After graduating from the Boston Conservatory of Music, he moved to New York City. As a young actor in summer stock, regional theater and dinner theater, he starred in The Fantasticks, Oklahoma and Carousel, among others. He also worked at the off-Broadway Light Opera of Manhattan.
In late 1981, Alessandrini conceived and wrote a musical parody revue featuring spoofs of songs from Broadway musicals on which he had been working for some time. After a few months of weekend performances starring Alessandrini and a few friends at Palsson's Supper Club, the show evolved into Forbidden Broadway, which opened on January 15, 1982, at Palsson's, directed by Alessandrini. He continued to appear in the revue, which caught the theatergoing public's attention after Rex Reed published a rave review and ultimately ran for 2,332 performances in a number of venues. It has subsequently been rewritten several times to include parodies of newer shows and ran almost continuously for 25 years with productions both in and outside New York. In 2006, the show and Alessandrini won Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre. The last incarnation, called Forbidden Broadway Goes to Rehab, played at the 47th Street Theatre until March 2009.
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Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century.
During her long career, she made a total of 73 films, and was best known as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre. She achieved great success on her own in a variety of film roles and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Kitty Foyle (1940). She ranks #14 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of actress screen legends.
Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri, the only child of William Eddins McMath, an electrical engineer, and his wife, Lela Emogene (née Owens; 1891–1977). Ginger's parents separated soon after her birth, and she and her mother went to live with her grandparents, Walter and Saphrona (née Ball) Owens, in nearby Kansas City. Rogers' parents fought over her custody. After her mother denied him visitation, her father reportedly absconded with his daughter twice. After her parents divorced, Rogers stayed with her grandparents while her mother wrote scripts for two years in Hollywood. Rogers was to remain close to her grandfather (much later, when she was a star in 1939, she bought him a home at 5115 Greenbush Avenue in Sherman Oaks, California so that he could be close to her while she was filming at the studios).[citation needed]
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Giorgio Moroder
Hansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder, named on record sleeves often only Giorgio (born 26 April 1940, Urtijëi, South Tyrol, Italy) is an Italian (of Ladin ethnicity) record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records. He collaborated with Donna Summer during the era of disco (including "Love to Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love") and is the founder of the former Musicland Studios in Munich, which was used as a recording studio by artists including the Electric Light Orchestra, Led Zeppelin, Queen and Elton John.
In addition to producing several hits with Donna Summer, Moroder also produced a number of electronic disco hits for The Three Degrees, two albums for Sparks, a handful of songs on Bonnie Tyler's album Bitterblue as well as her 1985 single "Here She Comes" and a score of songs for performers including David Bowie, Irene Cara, Madleen Kane, Melissa Manchester, Blondie, Japan, and France Joli.
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Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns (born 5 October 1923) is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer (notably of "Send in the Clowns", which she originated in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music and "Sister Suffragette" which was written for her for Walt Disney's musical motion picture, Mary Poppins written by the Sherman Brothers).
Johns was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the daughter of Alys Maude (née Steele-Payne), a pianist, and Mervyn Johns (1899–1992), the British stage and film actor. Her roots are in West Wales, and she was born in Pretoria while her parents were performing on tour there. She attended Clifton High School in Bristol for a short time.
Johns made her first stage appearance in Buckie's Bears as a child ballerina at the Garrick Theatre in 1935. She made her 1938 film debut in the movie version of Winifred Holtby's novel, South Riding. In 1944, she appeared with her father in Halfway House, and in 1948 starred as a mermaid in Miranda (Johns later reprised the role in a 1954 sequel, Mad About Men). In 1952, she co-starred in the movie version of Arnold Bennett's novel The Card.
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Gold and Fizdale
Arthur Gold (6 February 1917 – 3 January 1990) and Robert Fizdale (12 April 1920 – 6 December 1995) were an American two-piano ensemble; they were also authors and television cooking show hosts.
Gold and Fizdale met during their student years at the Juilliard School. They formed a lifelong gay partnership based around their common interests of music (forming one of the most important piano duos of the 20th century), travel and cooking.
It has often been said that Gold and Fizdale revolutionized the art of performing as a two-piano duo. While this may be a subjective statement, it must objectively be stated that they did commission and première many of the most important works for this ensemble in the second half of the 20th century, including works by John Cage ("A Book of Music" (1944) which is one of Cage's earliest experiments in using the prepared Piano),Paul Bowles, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem and many other important American Composers.
They were fixtures in New York's artistic community, being friends with literary and cultural figures such as Truman Capote, James Schuyler, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, among others.
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Greg Morrison
Greg Morrison (born 1965) is an Tony Award–winning and Drama Desk Award–winning Canadian writer and composer best known for his work on the music and lyrics of The Drowsy Chaperone, which he wrote with Lisa Lambert. He also has extensive credits for directing and musical directing shows across the United States and Canada. He is a recipient of a Canadian Comedy Award and a Sterling Award for Original Composition.
Morrison’s affiliation with The Drowsy Chaperone started in 1999 when Don McKellar and Lisa Lambert created a spoof of old musicals for the stag party before the wedding of their theatre friends Bob Martin and Janet Van De Graaff.
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Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor.
One of the world's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an Academy Award. President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at #12. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983.
Eldred Gregory Peck was born in La Jolla, California, the son of Missouri-born Bernice Mae "Bunny" (née Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, who was a chemist and pharmacist. Peck's father was of Irish (maternal) heritage and English (paternal) heritage, and his mother was of Scots (paternal) and English (maternal) ancestry. Peck's father was a Catholic and his mother converted upon marrying his father. Peck's Irish-born paternal grandmother, Catherine Ashe, was related to Thomas Ashe, who took part in the Easter Rising fewer than three weeks after Peck's birth and died while on hunger strike in 1917. Peck's parents divorced by the time he was six years old and he spent the next few years being raised by his maternal grandmother.
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Hal Prince
Harold Smith "Hal" Prince (born January 30, 1928) is an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the past half-century. He has garnered twenty-one Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards.
Prince wasCole was her born in New York City to Milton A. Prince, a stockbroker, and Blanche Stern. He entered the University of Pennsylvania at age 16, where he followed a liberal arts curriculum and graduated three years later. He later served two years with the United States Army in post-WWII Germany.
Prince began work in the theatre as an assistant stage manager to theatrical producer and director George Abbott. Along with Abbott, he co-produced The Pajama Game, which won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical. He went on to direct his own productions in 1962 beginning with A Family Affair and hit a series of unsuccessful productions.
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Harold Nicholas
Harold Lloyd Nicholas (March 27, 1921 – July 3, 2000) was an American dancer specializing in tap. He was the younger half of the world famous tap dancing pair the Nicholas Brothers, known as two of the world's greatest dancers. His older brother was Fayard Nicholas. Harold was married to actress Dorothy Dandridge from 1942 to 1951.
Nicholas was born to drummer and orchestra leader Ulysses Domonick and pianist Viola Harden in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. By the age of three, his older brother Fayard enjoyed sitting in the audience of the black vaudeville theater where his parents performed, enraptured by the great performers on stage. Immersed in show business, when the Nicholases added a second son to the family, seven-year-old Fayard insisted that the child be named after his idol, Harold Lloyd, the silent screen comedian. Soon after Harold was born the two brothers began dancing. They quickly gained acclaim for their elegant acrobatic moves and mastery of tap. When Fayard turned 16 and Harold 9, they had made their first appearance at the legendary Cotton Club in New York City. They were popular immediately.
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Harold Prince
Harold Smith "Hal" Prince (born January 30, 1928) is an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the past half-century. He has garnered twenty-one Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards.
Prince wasCole was her born in New York City to Milton A. Prince, a stockbroker, and Blanche Stern. He entered the University of Pennsylvania at age 16, where he followed a liberal arts curriculum and graduated three years later. He later served two years with the United States Army in post-WWII Germany.
Prince began work in the theatre as an assistant stage manager to theatrical producer and director George Abbott. Along with Abbott, he co-produced The Pajama Game, which won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical. He went on to direct his own productions in 1962 beginning with A Family Affair and hit a series of unsuccessful productions.
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Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter, CBE (born 26 May 1966) is an English actress. She made her acting debut in a television adaptation of K. M. Peyton's A Pattern of Roses before winning her first film role as the titular character in Lady Jane. She is known for her roles in films such as A Room with a View, Fight Club, and playing the villainess Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter series, as well as for frequently collaborating with director and domestic partner Tim Burton in films such as Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows.
A two-time Academy Award nominee for her performances in The Wings of the Dove and The King's Speech, Bonham Carter's acting has been further recognised with six Golden Globe nominations, an International Emmy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to drama, and received the award from the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 22 February 2012.
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Herbert Kretzmer
Herbert Kretzmer OBE (born 5 October 1925) is a South African-born English journalist and lyric writer. He is perhaps best known as the lyricist for the English-language musical adaptation of Les Misérables.
Kretzmer began his professional career writing documentary films and the commentary for a weekly cinema newsreel. However, he soon moved on to print journalism, initially as a reporter and feature writer for the Johannesburg Sunday Express. He relocated to London in the mid-1950s and pursued twin careers as journalist and lyric writer.
After several years as a feature writer on the Daily Sketch, Kretzmer became a profile writer on the Sunday Dispatch and the Daily Express, interviewing John Steinbeck, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Sugar Ray Robinson, Louis Armstrong, Henry Miller, Cary Grant and Duke Ellington. In 1962, he became senior drama critic of the Daily Express: a post he held for 18 years, covering about 3,000 first nights.
From 1979 to 1987, he wrote television criticism for the Daily Mail, winning in this capacity two national press awards, including TV Critic Of The Year.
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Herbert Ross
Herbert David Ross (May 13, 1927 – October 9, 2001) was an American film director, producer, choreographer and actor.
Born Herbert David Ross in Brooklyn, New York, he made his stage debut as Third Witch with a touring company of Macbeth in 1942. His Broadway credits as a performer included Something for the Boys (1943), Laffing Room Only (1944), Beggar's Holiday (1946), and Look, Ma, I'm Dancin'! (1948). His career as a choreographer began with the American Ballet Theatre in 1950; the following year he choreographed his first Broadway production, the Arthur Schwartz-Dorothy Fields musical adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
His first film assignment was as uncredited choreographer on Carmen Jones in 1954. He choreographed the dance numbers for the Cliff Richard films The Young Ones (1961) and Summer Holiday (1963). In 1968, Ross worked with Barbra Streisand as choreographer and director of musical numbers for the film Funny Girl. The following year, he made his motion picture directorial debut with a musical version of the classic Goodbye, Mr. Chips, starring Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark. Other movies followed for Ross, including The Owl and the Pussycat, Funny Lady (both starred Barbra Streisand), Pennies From Heaven, T.R. Baskin, and the original Footloose.
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Horton Foote
Albert Horton Foote, Jr. (March 14, 1916 – March 4, 2009) was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta. In 1995, Foote was the inaugural recipient of the Austin Film Festival's Distinguished Screenwriter Award. In describing his 3-play work, "The Orphans' Home Cycle", the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal said this: "Foote, who died last March, left behind a masterpiece, one that will rank high among the signal achievements of American theater in the 20th century." In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Foote was born to Albert Horton Foote (1890-1973) and Harriet Gautier "Hallie" Brooks (1894-1974) in Wharton, Texas.His younger brothers were Thomas Brooks Foote (1921-1944) who died in aerial combat over Germany, and John Speed Foote (1923-1995).
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Howard Ashman
Howard Elliott Ashman (May 17, 1950 – March 14, 1991) was an American playwright and lyricist. Ashman first studied at Boston University and Goddard College (with a stop at Tufts University's Summer Theater) and then went on to achieve his master's degree from Indiana University in 1974. He collaborated with Alan Menken on several films, notably animated features for Disney, Ashman writing the lyrics and Menken composing the music.
Ashman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Shirley Thelma (née Glass) and Raymond Albert Ashman, an ice cream cone manufacturer. He was the artistic director of the WPA Theater in New York. His first two plays, Cause Maggie's Afraid of the Dark and Dreamstuff, were met with mixed reviews. His play The Confirmation was produced in 1979 at Princeton's McCarter Theater and starred Herschel Bernardi. He first worked with Alan Menken on a 1979 musical adapted from Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. They also collaborated on Little Shop of Horrors with Ashman as director, lyricist, and librettist, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.
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Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH CBE (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He has won multiple Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is known for film roles such as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Magneto in the X-Men films, and as Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code.
McKellen was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality, in the 2008 New Year Honours.
McKellen was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, though he spent most of his early life in Wigan. Born shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the experience had some lasting impact on him. In response to an interview question when an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, he said: "Well, darling, you forget — I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old."
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Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (sometimes spelled Strawinsky or Stravinskii; Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский, transliterated: Igorʹ Fëdorovič Stravinskij; Russian pronunciation: [ˌiɡərʲ ˌfʲjodɐrɐvʲɪtɕ strɐˈvʲinskʲɪj]; 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian, and later French and American composer, pianist and conductor. He is acknowledged by many as one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The Rite of Spring, which provoked a riot during its premiere, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His so-called Russian phase was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue and symphony). They frequently concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of detachment or austerity and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, for example J.S. Bach and Tchaikovsky. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells and clarity of form, of instrumentation and of utterance.
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Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɪŋmar ˈbærjman] ( listen); 14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential film directors of all time.
He directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television, most of which he also wrote. He also directed over one hundred and seventy plays. Among his company of actors were Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in the landscape of Sweden. His major subjects were death, illness, faith, betrayal, and insanity.
Bergman was active for more than six decades. In 1976 his career was seriously threatened as the result of a botched criminal investigation for alleged income tax evasion. Outraged, Bergman suspended a number of pending productions, closed his studios, and went into self-imposed exile in Germany for eight years.
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Irene Cara
Irene Cara (born March 18, 1959) is an American singer and actress. She became famous for her role in the 1980 film Fame, earning her a Golden Globe nomination, and her recording of the song "Fame" became an international hit. Cara won an Academy Award in 1984 in the category of Best Original Song for co-writing "Flashdance... What a Feeling, which also became an international hit."
She married Hollywood stuntman Conrad Palmisano in 1986. They divorced in 1991.
Cara's father, Gaspar Cara, was Puerto Rican and Cara's mother, Louise, was an American of Cuban descent. Cara has two sisters and two brothers. At age three, Irene Cara was one of five finalists for the 'Little Miss America' pageant. Cara began to play the piano "by ear" and soon thereafter, she began seriously studying music, acting, and dance. Cara's performing career started when she was a child on Spanish-language television, professionally singing and dancing. She made early TV appearances on the Original Amateur Hour (singing in Spanish) and Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. She was a regular on PBS’s educational program The Electric Company, which starred Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno, and Morgan Freeman. As a child, Cara recorded a Latin-market Spanish-language record; an English Christmas album soon followed. She also appeared in a major concert tribute to Duke Ellington which also featured Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr, and Roberta Flack.
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Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907 and had his first major international hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911.
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Berlin's native Russia, which also "flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania." Over the years he was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his aim being to "reach the heart of the average American" whom he saw as the "real soul of the country."
He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him "a legend" before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including "Easter Parade", "White Christmas", "Happy Holiday", "This is the Army, Mr. Jones", and "There's No Business Like Show Business". His Broadway musical and 1942 film, This is the Army, with Ronald Reagan, had Kate Smith singing Berlin's "God Bless America" which was first performed in 1938. Smith still performed the song on her 1960 CBS television series, The Kate Smith Show. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Celine Dion recorded it as a tribute, making it #1 on the charts.
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Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won 'Best Actor' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
Lemmon was born in an elevator[citation needed] at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the only child of Mildred Burgess LaRue (née Noel) and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., who was the president of a doughnut company. Lemmon attended John Ward Elementary School in Newton and The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He had stated that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight. Lemmon attended Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard University (Class of 1947), where he lived in Adams House and was an active member of several Drama Clubs - becoming president of the Hasty Pudding Club - as well as a member of the Delphic Club for Gentleman, a final club at Harvard. After Harvard, Lemmon joined the Navy, receiving V-12 training and serving as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway. He studied acting under coach Uta Hagen. He also became enamored of the piano and learned to play it on his own. He could also play the harmonica, organ, and the double bass.
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Jacques d'Amboise
Jacques d'Amboise (born July 28, 1934) is an American danseur and choreographer.
D'Amboise was born as Joseph Jacques Ahearn in Dedham, Massachusetts. He was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, where ballets were especially created for him by famous choreographer George Balanchine. He has also choreographed ballets for the New York City Ballet.
As well as ballets, d'Amboise danced in films, including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, where he played the part of Ephraim, one of the brothers—and Carousel (1956), where he danced the ballet role of the Starlight Carnival barker in Louise's Ballet.
D'Amboise founded National Dance Institute in 1976, which has been teaching school children how to dance for the past 30 years. A documentary film (He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' ) about Jacques d'Amboise and National Dance Institute won an Academy Award. The NDI program often combines music and art with studies of other cultures, histories, and literature, offering a unique and comprehensive performing arts experience, while fostering curiosity and a sense of achievement.
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James Coburn
James Harrison Coburn III (August 31, 1928 – November 18, 2002) was an American film and television actor. Coburn appeared in nearly 70 films and made over 100 television appearances during his 45-year career, and played a wide range of roles and won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction.
A capable, rough-hewn leading man, his toothy grin and lanky body made him a perfect tough-guy in numerous leading and supporting roles in Westerns and action films, such as The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is for Heroes, The Great Escape, Major Dundee, Our Man Flint, Duck, You Sucker, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Cross of Iron.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s he would cultivate an image synonymous with "cool", and along with such contemporaries as Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson, became one of the prominent "tough-guy" actors of his day.
Coburn was born in Laurel, Nebraska, the son of Mylet S. (née Johnson) and James Harrison Coburn, Jr., who had a garage business that was wiped out by the Great Depression. Coburn was of Scotch-Irish and Swedish descent. He was raised in Compton, California, attended Compton Junior College and enlisted in the United States Army in 1950, serving as a truck driver and an occasional disc jockey on an Army radio station in Texas. Coburn also narrated Army training films in Mainz, Germany. He attended Los Angeles City College, where he studied acting alongside Jeff Corey and Stella Adler, then made his stage debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in Billy Budd. Coburn was selected for a Remington Products razor commercial in which he was able to shave off 11 days of beard growth in less than 60 seconds, while joking that he had more teeth to show on camera than the other 12 candidates for the part.
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James Goldman
James Goldman (June 30, 1927 – October 28, 1998) was an American screenwriter and playwright, and the brother of screenwriter and novelist William Goldman.
He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up primarily in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. He is most noted as the author of The Lion in Winter and author of the book for the Broadway musical Follies.
Goldman died from a heart attack in New York City, where he had lived for many years.
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James Hammerstein
James Hammerstein (March 23, 1931 - January 7, 1999) was an American theatre director and producer. He was the son of Oscar Hammerstein II and his wife Dorothy (née Blanchard).
Hammerstein attended the George School in Newtown, Pennsylvania, where he met fellow student Stephen Sondheim. He began his Broadway career as a stage manager, notably for shows such as South Pacific, Me and Juliet, and Flower Drum Song co-written by his father Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers. The first play he produced was Blue Denim by James Leo Herlihy and William Noble and the first play he directed was the comedy Absence of a Cello in 1964. The New York Times wrote: "James Hammerstein has staged the piece with a great deal of verve." His other directing credits include The Indian Wants the Bronx, Wise Child, Butley.
Hammerstein directed the New York City Opera production of The Sound of Music in 1990. He co-directed the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical State Fair in 1996. Among the other Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals he directed were Oklahoma! (London and Australia), The King and I (Tel Aviv, US and UK tours), and Carousel
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James Kirkwood, Jr.
James Kirkwood, Jr. (August 22, 1924 – April 21, 1989) was an American playwright, author and actor. In 1976 he received the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway hit A Chorus Line.
Kirkwood was born in Los Angeles, California. His father James Kirkwood, Sr. was an actor and director in silent films and his mother was actress Lila Lee. After their divorce, he spent much of his time with his mother's family in Elyria, Ohio where he graduated from high school.
From 1953 to 1957 he played Mickey Emerson on the CBS soap opera Valiant Lady. Kirkwood wrote the semi-autobiographical novel There Must Be a Pony, which was made into a television film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Wagner. Other novels include P. S. Your Cat Is Dead! (adapted into a play of the same name, which was, in turn, adapted into a film by Steve Guttenberg), Good Times/Bad Times, Some Kind of Hero, and Hit Me with a Rainbow.
Kirkwood won the 1976 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with collaborator Nicholas Dante for A Chorus Line.
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James Lapine
James Lapine (born January 10, 1949) is an American stage director and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
Lapine was born in Mansfield, Ohio and graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1971. He did graduate study in both photography and graphic design at the California Institute of the Arts. He was a photographer, graphic designer, and architectural preservationist and taught design at the Yale School of Drama. At Yale University he wrote an adaptation and directed the Gertrude Stein play Photograph, which was produced Off-Broadway at the Open Space in SoHo in 1977. He proceeded to write and direct Off-Broadway plays and musicals, working with composer William Finn on March of the Falsettos in 1981 as director; the musical won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play. Frank Rich, the New York Times theatre critic, noted "Mr. Lapine's wildly resourceful staging."
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James Mason
James Neville Mason (15 May 1909 - 27 July 1984) was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes (winning once).
Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to John and Mabel Mason; his father was a wealthy merchant. He was educated at Marlborough College, and earned a first in architecture at Peterhouse, Cambridge where he became involved in stock theatre companies in his spare time. Mason had no formal training as an actor and initially embarked upon it for fun. After Cambridge he joined the Old Vic theatre in London under the guidance of Tyrone Guthrie and Alexander Korda. In 1933 Korda gave Mason a small role in The Private Life of Don Juan but fired him three days into shooting.
From 1935 to 1948 he starred in many British quota quickies. A conscientious objector during World War II (causing his family to break with him for many years), he became immensely popular for his brooding anti-heroes in the Gainsborough series of melodramas of the 1940s, including The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945). He also starred with Deborah Kerr and Robert Newton in Hatter's Castle (1942). He then took the lead role in the critically acclaimed and immensely popular The Seventh Veil (1945) that set box office records in postwar Britain and raised him to international stardom. He followed it with a role as a mortally wounded Irish bank robber in Odd Man Out (1947) and his first Hollywood film, Caught (1949). Exhibitors voted him the most popular star in Britain in 1944 and 1945.
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Janie Sell
Jane Ann "Janie" Sell (born October 1, 1939, Detroit, Michigan) is an American actress.
Sell won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Over Here!, which also starred the then-surviving Andrews Sisters, Maxene and Patty. She also appeared in George M!, I Love My Wife, Irene, and a revival of Pal Joey.
A legal secretary, she last worked as an actress substituting for Carol Burnett, and playing Burnett's role in matinée performances of the comedy, Moon Over Buffalo, which co-starred Philip Bosco, in the mid-1990s.
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Jason Danieley
Jason D. Danieley (born July 13, 1971, St. Louis, Missouri) is an American actor, singer, concert performer and recording artist. He is married to fellow Broadway star, Marin Mazzie.
The New York Times called Danieley “The most exquisite tenor on Broadway”. After classical voice training, Danieley, at the age of 25, made his Broadway debut in the Harold Prince-directed revival of Candide, as the title character. Prince was quoted in The New York Times as saying "It's unusual in the world of musical theater to find someone who can sing as well as he can act, mark my words: Jason has an extraordinary future ahead of him."
Just prior to his Broadway debut Danieley made a huge splash in the New York theatre community in a show written by Richard Rodgers’s grandson, Adam Guettel. The show was Floyd Collins, based on the tragedy of caver Floyd Collins. With a mixture of Appalachian and classical music, this was a good vehicle for Danieley's talents, having a classical background, but being raised on old-time, country and gospel music.
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Jason Robards
Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. (July 26, 1922 – December 26, 2000) was an American actor on stage, and in film and television. He is a winner of the Tony Award, two Academy Awards and the Emmy Award. He was also a United States Navy combat veteran of World War II.
He became famous playing works of Eugene O'Neill, an American playwright, and regularly performed in O'Neill's works throughout his career. Robards was cast in both common-man roles and as well-known historical figures.
Robards was born in Chicago, the son of Hope Maxine (née Glanville) Robards and Jason Robards, Sr., an actor who regularly appeared on the stage and in such early films as The Gamblers (1929). Robards was of English, Welsh, Irish, and Swedish descent.
The family moved to New York City, New York, when Jason Jr. was still a toddler, and then moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was six years old. Later interviews with Robards suggested that the trauma of his parents' divorce, which occurred during his grade-school years, greatly affected his personality and worldview.
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Jason Robert Brown
Jason Robert Brown (born June 20, 1970 in Ossining, New York) is an American musical theater composer, lyricist, and playwright. Brown's music sensibility fuses pop-rock stylings with theatrical lyrics. An accomplished pianist, Brown has often served as music director, conductor, orchestrator, and pianist for his own productions.
Brown grew up in the suburbs of New York City, and attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York for 2 years. During summer, he attended French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts in Hancock, New York. He said Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Sunday in the Park with George were two of his biggest influences, and had it not been for them, he would have joined a rock band and tried to be Billy Joel.
When Brown was 23, he and a friend were invited to see Stephen Sondheim's show Passion by Sondheim himself. Brown's friend, whom he refers to only as "Franz Liszt", wrote to Sondheim, and that is how they both got the tickets. Sondheim also invited them to dinner afterward. At the show, they sat in front of the New York Times' Frank Rich. They went to dinner, and after twenty minutes, Sondheim asked them what they thought of the show: they both were silent. Brown described the dinner after that moment as "many extremely awkward silences punctuated by bursts of frantic, desperate conversation about anything other than the slaughtered elephant in the room." Brown called mutual friend Daisy Prince the next day, asking if there might be any way to repair the damage after the dinner. She and her family decided that Brown should call Sondheim. Brown paraphrased what Sondheim said:
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Jeanine Tesori
Jeanine Tesori (born 1961, originally Jeanine Levenson) is an American musical arranger and composer who won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change.
Tesori made her Broadway debut when she arranged the dance music for the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. In 1997 she composed the score for the off-Broadway musical Violet, which won her an Obie Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, and arranged the music for the Johnny Mercer revue Dream, a task she repeated with the 1998 revival of The Sound of Music and the 1999 revue Swing! She also served as associate conductor for the Broadway productions of The Secret Garden and The Who's Tommy.
In 2000, Tesori joined forces with lyricist Dick Scanlan to write eleven new songs for a stage adaptation of Thoroughly Modern Millie. A successful run at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego prompted a transfer to Broadway in 2002, and Tesori was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music.
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Jenn Colella
Jennifer Lin Colella (born September 22, 1974) is an American actress and singer, best known for her work in Broadway musicals.
Jenn Colella has been a familiar face in the New York theatre scene since starring as Sissy in Urban Cowboy on Broadway, for which she received an Outer Critic's Circle Award Nomination. Since then, she has appeared in Broadway's High Fidelity, starred in the world premiere of The Times They Are A-Changin' at the Old Globe Theatre, and recently performed in Beautiful Girls, a musical tribute honoring Stephen Sondheim at the World Festival of Theatre in Colorado Springs.
Off-Broadway credits include Don't Quit Your Night Job (Ha! Comedy Club), Slut (The Actor's Theatre), and The Great American Trailer Park Musical (NYMF). Most recently, Jenn appeared as Hedda Hopper in Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin at the La Jolla Playhouse. Jenn is currently appearing off-Broadway in Lucky Guy at the Little Shubert Theatre.
On television, Jenn has appeared on the Oxygen Network as the Co-host of "Can You Tell?", ABC's "The Cashmere Mafia", FX's "Rescue Me", CBS's "The Good Wife", and, most recently, PBS's Tribute to Stephen Sondheim with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. Film credits include Lay It Down for Good (lead) and Uncertainty (playing opposite Manoel Felciano, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins).
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Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", "Long Ago (and Far Away)" and "Who?". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and E. Y. Harburg.
A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals. Although dozens of Kern's musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now regularly revived. Songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Although Kern detested jazz arrangements of his songs, many have been adopted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes.
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Jerry Bock
Jerrold Lewis "Jerry" Bock (November 23, 1928 – November 3, 2010) was an American musical theater composer. He received the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Sheldon Harnick for their 1959 musical Fiorello! and the Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof with Harnick.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut and raised in Flushing, Queens, New York, Bock studied the piano as a child. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he wrote the musical Big As Life, which toured the state and enjoyed a run in Chicago. After graduation he spent three summers at the Tamiment Playhouse in the Poconos and wrote for early television revues with lyricist Larry Holofcener.
He made his Broadway debut in 1955 when he and Lawrence Holofcener contributed songs to Catch a Star. The following year the duo collaborated on the musical Mr. Wonderful, designed for Sammy Davis, Jr., after which they worked on Ziegfeld Follies of 1956, which closed out-of-town.
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Jerry Herman
Jerry Herman (born July 10, 1931) is an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles. In 2009, Herman received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. He is a recipient of the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors.
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Jerry Leiber
Jerome "Jerry" Leiber (April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011) and Mike Stoller (born March 13, 1933) were American songwriting and record producing partners. Stoller was the composer and Leiber the lyricist. Their most famous songs include "Hound Dog," "Jailhouse Rock," "Don't," "Kansas City," "Stand By Me" (with Ben E. King), and "On Broadway" (with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil).
Leiber and Stoller's initial successes were as the writers of such crossover hit songs as "Hound Dog" and "Kansas City." Later in the 1950s, particularly through their work with The Coasters, they created a string of ground-breaking hits that are some of the most entertaining in rock and roll, by using the humorous vernacular of the teenagers sung in a style that was openly theatrical rather than personal, songs that include "Young Blood," "Searchin'," and "Yakety Yak." They were the first to surround black music with elaborate production values, enhancing its emotional power with The Drifters in "There Goes My Baby" and influencing Phil Spector who worked with them on recordings of the Drifters and Ben E. King. Leiber and Stoller went into the record business and, focusing on the "girl group" sound, released some of the greatest classics of the Brill Building period.
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Jerry Zaks
Jerry Zaks (born September 7, 1946) is a German-born American stage and television director, and actor. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Drama Desk Award for directing The House of Blue Leaves, Lend Me A Tenor, and Six Degrees of Separation and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Guys and Dolls.
Zaks was born in Stuttgart, Germany, the son of Holocaust survivors. His family emigrated to the United States in 1948, finally settling in Paterson, New Jersey. He graduated from Dartmouth College and received a Master of Fine Arts from Smith College.
He made his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Grease as "Kenickie" and appeared in Tintypes in 1980. He made his directing debut in 1981 with the off-Broadway production of Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy. He has directed many Broadway productions, both musicals and dramas.
He has also directed many Off-Broadway productions, several at Playwrights Horizons and the Public Theatre. He directed the City Center Encores! productions of Girl Crazy (November 2009),Stairway to Paradise (May 2007), and Bye Bye Birdie (May 2004).
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Jessye Norman
Jessye Norman (born September 15, 1945) is an American opera singer. Norman is a well-known contemporary opera singer and recitalist, and is among some of the most highly successful performers in classical music. A dramatic soprano, Norman is associated in particular with the Wagnerian repertoire, and with the roles of Sieglinde, Ariadne, Alceste, and Leonore.
Jessye Mae Norman was born on September 15, 1945 in Augusta, Georgia to Silas Norman, an insurance salesman, and Janie King-Norman, a school teacher. She was one of five children in a family of amateur musicians; her mother and grandmother were both pianists, her father a singer in a local choir. Norman's mother insisted that she start piano lessons at an early age. Norman attended Charles T. Walker Elementary School, A.R. Johnson Junior High School, and Lucy C. Laney Senior High School, all in downtown Augusta.
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Jim Walton
James Carr Walton (born July 7, 1948) is the youngest son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and the Chairman of Arvest Bank.
With an estimated 2012[update] net worth of around US$21.1 billion, Walton is currently ranked by Forbes as the 9th-richest person in the world.
Walton received a bachelor's degree from the University of Arkansas. He is married to Lynne McNabb Walton and has four children, including Alice Anne Walton and Thomas Layton Walton. The family resides in Bentonville, Arkansas.
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Joanna Gleason
Joanna Gleason (née Hall; born June 2, 1950) is a Canadian actress and singer. She is a Tony Award-winning musical theatre actress and has also had a number of notable film and TV roles.
Gleason was born in Toronto, Ontario as the daughter of Marilyn (née Plottel), a producer, writer, and actress; and television personality Monty Hall. At the time of her birth, her father was working at the Canadian Wheat Board and had changed his name from Halperin to Hall. He later started his TV career and went on to fame as host of Let's Make a Deal. Monty Hall's brother, Robert Halperin, also changed his name to Hall.[citation needed]
In May 1956, the Hall family moved to New York and, in the early 1960s, they again moved to Los Angeles, California. Gleason graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1968. While attending BHHS she was in the school's productions of The Music Man, The Mikado, The Grass Harp, and The Madwoman of Chaillot. In high school Gleason received acting instruction from John Ingle, the soap-opera star, who taught at BHHS from 1955 to 1985. She continued her education at UCLA, then Occidental College, from which she graduated. Gleason has been a teacher herself, holding classes and workshops all over the country.[citation needed]
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Joanne Woodward
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman. She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award winning role in The Three Faces of Eve (1957).
Woodward was born in Thomasville, Georgia, daughter of Elinor Gignilliat (née Trimmier) and Wade Woodward, Jr., who at one point was vice president of publisher Charles Scribner's Sons. Her middle name, "Gignilliat", originates from distant Huguenot ancestry. She was influenced to become an actress by her mother's love of movies. Her mother named her after Joan Crawford, using the Southern pronunciation of the name "Joanne". Attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, nine-year-old Woodward rushed out into the parade of stars and sat on the lap of Laurence Olivier, star Vivien Leigh's partner and future husband. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1977, in a television production of Come Back, Little Sheba. During rehearsals, she mentioned this incident to him and he told her he remembered her doing it.
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Joe Darion
Joe Darion, (30 January 1917 - 6 June 2001) was an American musical theatre lyricist, most famous for Man of La Mancha.
Darion was born in New York City and died in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
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Joe South
Joe South (born Joseph Alfred Souter, February 28, 1940, in Atlanta, Georgia) is a multi-talented American singer-songwriter and guitarist.
South opened his pop career in July 1958 with the novelty hit "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor". Thereafter South's music grew increasingly serious.
In 1959, South wrote two songs which were recorded by Gene Vincent: "I Might Have Known", which was on the album Sounds Like Gene Vincent (Capitol Records, 1959) and "Gone Gone Gone" which was included on the album The Crazy Beat of Gene Vincent (Capitol Records, 1963).
He had met and was encouraged by Bill Lowery,[citation needed] an Atlanta music publisher and radio personality. He began his recording career in Atlanta with National Recording Corporation, where he served as staff guitarist along with other NRC artists Ray Stevens and Jerry Reed. South's earliest recordings have been re-released by NRC on CD.
South was also a prominent sideman, playing guitar on Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools",Tommy Roe's "Sheila", and Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde album. Some list South on the electric guitar part that was added to Simon & Garfunkel's first hit, "The Sounds of Silence", although others credit Al Gorgoni and/or Vinnie Bell instead.
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Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (pronounced [joːˈhanəs ˈbʁaːms]; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.
Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works; he also worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished.
Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined art for which Johann Sebastian Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honour the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.
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John DeNicola
John DeNicola (born October 4, 1955) is an American songwriter and producer who, in 1988, won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as receiving a Grammy nomination for co-writing the song "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", which became the signature theme in the soundtrack of the film Dirty Dancing. In 1989 he was the co-winner of ASCAP Awards' "Most Performed Songs from Motion Pictures" for "Time of My Life" as well as for "Hungry Eyes", another song from the film. In addition to Dirty Dancing hits for Bill Medley, Jennifer Warnes and Eric Carmen, he has also written songs with and for Eddie Money, John Waite, Kristine W, Steve Holy, Jeannie Kendall, Sugar Jones, Annie Haslam, Bernie Worrell, The Sighs and Martin Briley.
A native of New York City and a longtime resident of its historic, traditionally associated with artists, neighborhood of Greenwich Village, John DeNicola began his musical career as a bass player with "Flight", a band which recorded for Motown in 1980 and was sampled by Erikah Badu on her hit song "Back in the Day". He subsequently played bass with such pop recording artists as Paul Young and Corey Hart, before concentrating on songwriting and producing.
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John Dexter
John Dexter (2 August 1925 - 23 March 1990) was an English theatre, opera, and film director.
Born in Derby, England, Dexter left school at the age of fourteen to serve in the British army during World War II. Following the war, he began working as a stage actor before turning to producing and directing shows for repertory companies. In 1957, he was appointed Associate Director of the English Stage Company.
Dexter's first great success was his production of Roots, in 1959, which brought Dame Joan Plowright to prominence. He went on to direct Toys in the Attic (with Dame Wendy Hiller, 1960), and Saint Joan (1963). In 1964, he was named Associate Director of the National Theatre of Great Britain, and he produced The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964).
That year, he also directed Othello, with Sir Laurence Olivier (in one of his greatest roles), Dame Maggie Smith, and Frank Finlay. It was considered a tremendous success. RCA recorded an audio version, and, the following year, Stuart Burge made a film of the production (now available on DVD) for BHE Films.
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John Guare
John Guare (pronounced gwâr; born February 5, 1938) is an American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body. His style, which mixes comic invention with an acute sense of the failure of human relations and aspirations, is at once cruel and deeply compassionate.
In the foreword to a collection of Guare's plays, film director Louis Malle writes:
Guare was born in New York City and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens. He was raised a Roman Catholic, but is apparently now a lapsed Catholic. He was educated at Georgetown University, (BA, 1960), where in 1958 he contributed a song to an original musical revue entitled The Natives Are Restless and presented by the Mask and Bauble Dramatic Society. The song humorously attributed the success of many famous people to the syllable “O” in their names. Under the direction of Donn B. Murphy, his play The Toadstool Boy, about a country singer's quest for fame, won first place in the District of Columbia Recreation Department's One-Act-Play competition.
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John Kander
John Harold Kander (born March 18, 1927) is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.
Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice (née Aaron) and Harold S. Kander. Kander attended The Pembroke Country-Day School and Oberlin College before earning a Master's degree at Columbia University where he was a protégé of Douglas Moore and studied composition with Jack Beeson.
Kander began his Broadway career as substitute rehearsal pianist for West Side Story. The stage manager for West Side Story then asked Kander to play the auditions for her next show, Gypsy. During the auditions, Kander met the choreographer, Jerome Robbins, who suggested that Kander compose the dance music for the show in 1959. After that experience, he wrote dance arrangements for Irma la Douce in 1960.
His first produced musical was A Family Affair, written with James and William Goldman. He met lyricist Fred Ebb in 1962 and began a songwriting collaboration that would last for more than four decades. Later that year rising star Barbra Streisand recorded two of the duo's songs, "My Coloring Book" and "I Don't Care Much." In 1965, Kander and Ebb landed their first show on Broadway, Flora the Red Menace, produced by Hal Prince, directed by George Abbott, and with book by George Abbott and Robert Russell,[disambiguation needed
] in which Liza Minnelli made her initial Broadway appearance. Kander and Ebb have since been associated with writing material for both Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, and have produced special material for their appearances live and on television.
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John McMartin
John McMartin (born November 18, 1929) is an American actor of stage, film and television.
McMartin was born in Warsaw, Indiana and raised in Minnesota. He attended college in Illinois and New York. He made his off-Broadway debut in Little Mary Sunshine in 1959, playing opposite Eileen Brennan. He won a Theatre World Award for his role as Corporal Billy Jester, and married one of the show's producers, Cynthia Baer, in 1960; they divorced in 1971. He has two daughters by this marriage, Kathleen and Susan.
His first Broadway appearance was as Forrest Noble in The Conquering Hero, which was followed by Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole. He created the part of Oscar in Sweet Charity in 1966, opposite Gwen Verdon, garnering a Tony nomination, and played the role again on film opposite Shirley MacLaine. He was cast in Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1962, but his role was cut before the show opened.
He later starred in Sondheim's Follies as Benjamin Stone; he introduced the ballad "The Road You Didn't Take". His association with Sondheim has continued, appearing in regional productions of A Little Night Music and the Broadway revival of Into the Woods.
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John Weidman
John Weidman (born September 25, 1946) is an American librettist. He is the son of librettist and novelist Jerome Weidman.
He has written the books for a wide variety of stage musicals, three in collaboration with Stephen Sondheim: Pacific Overtures, Assassins, and Road Show. In 1999 he co-created the Tony Award-winning musical Contact with choreographer/director Susan Stroman. He has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book for a Musical three times.
In the 1970s, Weidman wrote for National Lampoon. Since 1986, Weidman has been a writer for Sesame Street, for which he has won more than a dozen Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Children's Program.
From 1999 to 2009 he was president of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Weidman received a B.A. from Harvard University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
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Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host and comedian, known for thirty years as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992). Carson received six Emmy Awards, the Governor Award, and a 1985 Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987. Johnny Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1993.
Although his show was already successful by the end of the 1960s, during the 1970s Carson became an American icon and remained so until his retirement in 1992. He adopted a casual, conversational approach with extensive interaction with guests, an approach pioneered by Arthur Godfrey and previous Tonight Show hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Late night hosts David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson, and Jimmy Fallon have all cited Carson's influence on their late-night talk shows, which resemble his in format and tone.
Carson was born in Corning, Iowa, in the year 1925, to Homer Lloyd "Kit" Carson, a power company manager, and Ruth Hook Carson, who was of Irish descent. He grew up in the nearby towns of Avoca, Clarinda, and Red Oak in southwest Iowa before moving to Norfolk, Nebraska, at the age of eight. At the age of twelve, Carson found a book on magic at a friend's house and immediately purchased a mail-order magician's kit. He debuted as "The Great Carsoni" at fourteen and was paid $3; many other performances at local picnics and country fairs followed.
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Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003), was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Although he is primarily remembered as a country music icon, his songs and sound spanned many other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll—especially early in his career—as well as blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal led to Cash being inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
Cash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice; for the "boom-chicka-boom" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band; for his rebelliousness, coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor; for providing free concerts inside prison walls; and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black". He traditionally started his concerts by saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." and usually following it up with his standard "Folsom Prison Blues".
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Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol. Dissatisfied with that status, Depp turned to film for more challenging roles; he played the title character of Edward Scissorhands (1990) and later found box office success in films such as Sleepy Hollow (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Rango (2011) and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (2003–present). He has collaborated with director and friend Tim Burton in eight films, most recently with Dark Shadows (2012).
Depp has gained acclaim for his portrayals of people such as Ed Wood, in Ed Wood, Joseph D. Pistone in Donnie Brasco, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, George Jung in Blow, and the bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.1 billion at the United States box office and over $7.6 billion worldwide. He has been nominated for top awards many times, winning the Best Actor Awards from the Golden Globes for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and from the Screen Actors Guild for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He also has garnered a sex symbol status in American cinema, being twice named as the "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine in 2003 and 2009. He has been listed in the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor, with $75 million.
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Jonathan Larson
Jonathan Larson (February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996) was an American composer and playwright noted for the serious social issues of multiculturalism, addiction, and homophobia explored in his work. Typical examples of his use of these themes are found in his works, Rent and tick, tick... BOOM!. He received three posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the rock opera Rent.
Larson was born to Jewish parents, Allan and Nanette Larson, in White Plains, New York. He was exposed to the performing arts, especially music and theatre from an early age, as he played the trumpet, tuba, was involved in his school's choir, and took formal piano lessons. His early musical influences were his favorite rock musicians such as Elton John, The Beatles, The Doors, The Who, and Billy Joel, as well as the classic composers of musical theatre, especially Stephen Sondheim. Larson was also involved in acting in high school, performing in lead roles in various productions at White Plains High School.
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Jonathan Tunick
Jonathan Tunick (born April 19, 1938, New York City, New York) is an American orchestrator, musical director, and composer, one of eleven people to have won all four major American show business awards: the Tony Awards, Academy Awards, Emmy Awards and Grammy Awards. He has worked on most of the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, starting in 1970 with Company and ending with the 2010-11 revival of Follies.
He graduated from the LaGuardia Performing Arts High School, and holds degrees from Bard College and the Juilliard School. Tunick's principal instrument is the clarinet.
Much of his work has arisen from his involvement in theatre, and he is associated especially with the musicals of Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim said of Tunick's work: " 'I think he's tops'..." and further noted that "Tunick is a standout in his field not only because of his musicianship and imagination, but primarily because of 'his great sensitivity to theatrical atmosphere.' "
Tunick also has a band, the "Broadway Moonlighters", which played at Birdland in March 2012 and in 2008 with Barbara Cook as his special guest. He has worked as an arranger and/or conductor on recordings with Judy Collins, Cleo Laine, Kiri Te Kanawa, Itzhak Perlman, Placido Domingo, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney and Bernadette Peters. In his review of the Bernadette Peters recording Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers and Hammerstein (Angel Records, 2002), John Kenrick wrote: "Jonathan Tunick provides the brilliant arrangements." Tunick won the Grammy Award as "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)/Best Background Arrangement" for his work on the song "No One Is Alone" from the Cleo Laine album Cleo Laine Sings Sondheim (RCA Victor, 1987).
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Judi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia “Judi” Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA (born 9 December 1934) is an English film, stage and television actress.
Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. She branched into film work, and won a BAFTA Award as Most Promising Newcomer; however, most of her work during this period was in theatre. Not generally known as a singer, she drew strong reviews for her leading role in the musical Cabaret in 1968.
During the next two decades, she established herself as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In television, she achieved success during this period, in the series A Fine Romance from 1981 until 1984 and in 1992 began a continuing role in the television romantic comedy series As Time Goes By.
Her film appearances were infrequent until she was cast as M in GoldenEye (1995), a role she has played in each James Bond film since. She received several notable film awards for her role as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown (1997), and has since been acclaimed for her work in such films as Shakespeare in Love (1998), Chocolat (2000), Iris (2001), Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) and Notes on a Scandal (2006), and the television production The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2001).
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Judith Jamison
Judith Ann Jamison (born May 10, 1943, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American dancer and choreographer, best known as the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
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Jule Styne
Jule Styne (December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.
Styne was born in London, England as Julius Kerwin Stein of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. At the age of eight he moved with his family to Chicago, where at an early age he began taking piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old.
Styne attended Chicago Musical College, but before then he had already attracted attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating. It would be the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne would compose in his career.
Styne established his own dance band, which brought him to the notice of Hollywood, where he was championed by Frank Sinatra and where he began a collaboration with lyricist Sammy Cahn, with whom he wrote many songs for the movies, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (#1 for 3 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1945), "Five Minutes More," and the Oscar-winning "Three Coins in the Fountain". He collaborated on the score for the 1955 musical film My Sister Eileen with Leo Robin. Ten of his songs were nominated for the Oscar, many written with Cahn, including "I've Heard That Song Before" (#1 for 13 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1943), "I'll Walk Alone", "It's Magic" (a #2 hit for Doris Day in 1948) and "I Fall in Love Too Easily".
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Jules Feiffer
Jules Ralph Feiffer (born January 26, 1929) is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays. In 1986, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning in The Village Voice.
Raised in The Bronx, New York City, New York, where he graduated from James Monroe High School in 1947, Jules Feiffer won a John Wanamaker Art Contest medal for a crayon drawing of the radio Western hero Tom Mix. Interested in an early age at cartooning, he wrote in 1965 about his childhood:
He read comic strips in the New York World-Telegram newspaper that his father brought home, including Our Boarding House, Alley Oop "and my favorite at the time, Wash Tubbs, with the 'soldier of fortune' hero, Captain Easy". When his father switched to the evening edition of the New York Post, Feiffer absorbed other strips, including Dixie Dugan, The Bungle Family, Nancy (then titled Fritzi Ritz), "and that masterpiece of sentimental naturalism, Abbie an' Slats. I studied that strip — its [Preston] Sturges-like characters, its [William] Saroyanesque plots, its uniquely cadenced dialogue. No strip other than Will Eisner's Spirit rivaled its structure. No strip, except [Milton] Caniff's Terry [and the Pirates], rivaled it in atmosphere."
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Julia McKenzie
Julia McKenzie (born 17 February 1941) is an English actress, singer and theatre director. She is best known for her performance in Fresh Fields, but to current television audiences, she may be better known for her role as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie's Marple. McKenzie has also appeared on the stage in both the West End and on Broadway, including in several Stephen Sondheim musicals.
She was born Julia Kathleen McKenzie on 17 February 1941, in Enfield, Middlesex, England, the daughter of Kathleen Rowe and Albion McKenzie.
In London's West End her performing credits include Guys and Dolls as Miss Adelaide (1982) and Sweeney Todd as Mrs. Lovett (1994), winning the Olivier Award for Actress of the Year in a Musical for each.
For her role in Woman in Mind, she received the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress. She has also appeared in Follies as Sally at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1987and Into the Woods as the Witch at the Phoenix Theatre in 1990. She appeared in Side By Side By Sondheim in the West End in 1976 and on Broadway in 1977,and was nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for her performance.
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Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (née Wells; born 1 October 1935) is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours.
Andrews is a former child actress and singer who made her Broadway debut in a 1954 production of The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, both of which earned her Tony Award nominations. In 1957, she made her television debut with the title role in Cinderella, which was seen by over 100 million viewers.
Andrews made her feature film debut in Mary Poppins (1964), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She received her second Academy Award nomination for The Sound of Music (1965). Adjusted for inflation, these two films are the 25th and 3rd highest grossing films of all time, respectively. From 1964 to 1967, Andrews was the biggest film star in the world, with the additional box office successes of her films The Americanization of Emily, Hawaii, Torn Curtain, and Thoroughly Modern Millie.
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Julius J. Epstein
Julius J. Epstein (August 22, 1909 – December 30, 2000) was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for the adaptation—in partnership with his twin brother, Philip, and others—of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's that became the screenplay for the film Casablanca (1942), for which its team of writers won an Academy Award. Following his brother's death in 1952, he continued writing, receiving two more Oscar nominations and, in 1998, a Los Angeles Film Critics Association career achievement award. His credits included Four Daughters (1938), The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Mr. Skeffington (1944), The Tender Trap (1955), Light in the Piazza (1962), Send Me No Flowers (1964), Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), and Reuben, Reuben (1983).
Epstein was born on August 22, 1909 in New York City, New York. He graduated from The Pennsylvania State University in 1931 with a BA in Arts and Letters. Both brothers boxed for the varsity squad there; in fact, Julius became an NCAA Bantamweight Champion. He maintained close ties with Penn State throughout his life (often as a guest lecturer at the film school), and was buried in a Penn State polo shirt.
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Kate Baldwin
Kate Baldwin (born c. 1975) is an American actress and singer known for her work in musical theatre.
Born in Shorewood, Wisconsin, Baldwin graduated from Shorewood High School in 1993, and from the theatre program at Northwestern University in 1997.
Baldwin made her Broadway debut in The Full Monty in 2000, followed by appearances in Thoroughly Modern Millie and Wonderful Town. She frequently performs in regional theater and was nominated for the Helen Hayes Award for her portrayal of Nellie Forbush in the 2002 Arena Stage production of South Pacific. Additional credits include The Sound of Music and The Music Man at The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri and Charlotte in A Little Night Music at Centre Stage in Baltimore.
Baldwin played the role of Sharon in the 2009 Encores! staged concert production of Finian's Rainbow. New York Times critic Charles Isherwood called her a "discovery" and praised her performance, noting she sang the role "beautifully... her rich, pure soprano riding the crests of the melodies with ease." She reprised the role in the Broadway revival that brought the Encores production to the St. James Theatre in October 2009. Her performance received positive notices again, as well as a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in Musical.
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Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress of film, stage, and television. Known for her headstrong independence and spirited personality, Hepburn's career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned more than 60 years. Her work came in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. Hepburn's characters were often strong, sophisticated women with a hidden vulnerability.
Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. After four years in the theatre, favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Her early years in the film industry were marked with success, including an Academy Award for her third picture, Morning Glory (1933), but this was followed by a series of commercial failures. In 1938 she was labeled "box office poison". Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the film rights to The Philadelphia Story, which she sold on the condition that she be the star. In the 1940s she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy. The screen-partnership spanned 25 years, and produced nine movies.
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Keith Forsey
Keith Forsey (born 2 January 1948, in London) is an English soundtrack composer,drummer, songwriter and record producer.
Forsey's first recordings were as the younger member of the group The Spectrum, better known for the end title theme for Gerry Anderson's Captain Scarlet, but hit makers across Europe in their own right, scoring hits in Germany and Spain on RCA Victor Records.
As drummer and long-time associate of producer Giorgio Moroder, Forsey can be heard on several albums of Donna Summer before 1981. He co-wrote several songs on the albums Bad Girls, The Wanderer and I'm a Rainbow. Forsey also formed a dance band called TRAX with Moroder's co-producer Pete Bellotte and produced two dance albums.
Forsey's drum sound was the mainstay of many Moroder productions during the 1970s including Sparks' album No. 1 in Heaven, Get on the Funk Train by Munich Machine (Moroder/Bellotte's house band), as well as various other studio/disco acts based in Munich at this time such as Boney M.. He also played on Moroder's Son of My Father, along with the as yet undiscovered, Donna Summer.
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Kevin Kline
Kevin Delaney Kline (born October 24, 1947) is an American stage and film actor. An Academy Award winner for his supporting role in the comedy hit Fish Called Wanda, AA Fish Called Wanda, he also won two Tony Awards and was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards and an Emmy Award.
Kline was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Peggy (née Kirk) and Robert Joseph Kline. His father was a classical music lover and an amateur opera singer who owned and operated The Record Bar, a record store in St. Louis that opened in the early '40s, and sold toys during the '60s and '70s; his father's family also owned Kline's Inc., a department store chain. Kline has described his mother as the "dramatic theatrical character in our family." Kline's father was Jewish, from a family that had emigrated from Germany; Kline's mother was of Irish descent, the daughter of an emigrant from County Louth. Kline was raised in his mother's Catholic religion (his father had become an agnostic). He has three siblings, Alex, Christopher, and Kate.
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Kim Crosby
Kim Crosby (Tallahassee, Florida) is a NASCAR driver, professional driving instructor, and monster truck driver. Before she became a NASCAR driver, she served as a middle school principal in Slidell, Louisiana, resigning in December 2004 to focus full-time on her racing career. Kim has a Masters Degree in Educational Administration.
Crosby originally was a drag racer, competing in the NHRA and IHRA for fifteen years. She began oval racing in 2000 at the Buck Baker Driving School, where she graduated in the advanced class. She would later return to work at the school as an instructor at the school's satellites at Bristol Motor Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway, and Darlington Raceway. She also ran the Florida Fast Trucks Series. Kim has also completed the Advanced Driving School at Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving.
In 2003, she made her debut in the ARCA RE/MAX Series, where her best finish came in her first start, a 21st at Kentucky Speedway. She ran two more races that year in the ARCA series. In 2004, she was signed to drive the #28 for Black Cat Racing, but left the team during Speedweeks. She ended up making her Busch Series debut at Talladega Superspeedway, finishing 20th in the #51 Boudreaux's Butt Paste Dodge owned by Ware Racing Enterprises. She ran three more races for Ware that season, her best finish coming in her Talladega debut. She closed out the year running for ORTEC Motorsports, finishing 38th at the Aaron's 312.
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Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Russian: И́сер Даниело́вич; December 9, 1916) is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past (1947), Champion (1949), Ace in the Hole (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Lust for Life (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Spartacus (1960), and Lonely Are the Brave (1962).
He is No.17 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time, making him the highest-ranked living person on the list. In 1996, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."
Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, the son of Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch, a businessman. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel, Belarus. His father's brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States. In addition to their surname, his parents also changed their given names to Harry and Bertha. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering the Navy during World War II.
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Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950) was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his most well known work The Threepenny Opera, a Marxist critique of capitalism, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill was a socialist[unreliable source?] who held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose. He also wrote a number of works for the concert hall, as well as several Judaism-themed pieces.
Kurt Julian Weill was born on March 2, 1900, the third of four children to Albert Weill (1867–1950) and Emma Weill née Ackermann (1872–1955). He grew up in a religious Jewish family in the "Sandvorstadt", the Jewish quarter in Dessau, Germany, where his father was a cantor. At the age of twelve, Kurt Weill started taking piano lessons and made his first attempts at writing music; his earliest preserved composition was written in 1913 and is titled Mi Addir. Jewish Wedding Song.
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Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937 – March 24, 2011) was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was nominated for three Tony Awards.
Wilson was raised in Missouri by his mother, but in 1956 he moved to California, where he worked and attended college. There, Wilson lived with his father, who did not accept Wilson's homosexuality, and so, in 1957, he moved to Chicago, where he worked as a graphic artist and studied playwriting. In 1962, he moved to New York and began to write plays for Off-Off-Broadway theatres. His 1964 short play, The Madness of Lady Bright, was his first significant success and led to further works treating gay identity and other social and romantic issues throughout the 1960s. In 1969, he was a co-founder of Circle Repertory Company, for whom he wrote many plays in the 1970s. His 1973 play, The Hot l Baltimore, was the company's first major hit with both audiences and critics; its Off-Broadway run exceeded 1,000 performances.
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Larry Gelbart
Larry Simon Gelbart (February 25, 1928 – September 11, 2009) was an American television writer, playwright, screenwriter and author.
Gelbart was born in Chicago to Jewish immigrants Harry Gelbart ("a barber since his half of a childhood in Latvia") and Frieda Sturner, who migrated to America from Dombrowa,[disambiguation needed]Poland. Marcia Gelbart Walkenstein was his sister.
Gelbart began as a writer at the age of sixteen for Danny Thomas' radio show after his father, who was Thomas' barber, showed Thomas some jokes Gelbart had written. During the 1940s Gelbart also wrote for Jack Paar and Bob Hope. In the 1950s, his most important work in television involved writing for Red Buttons, Sid Caesar on Caesar's Hour, in Celeste Holm's Honestly, Celeste!, as well as with writers Mel Tolkin, Michael Stewart, Selma Diamond, Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and (on two Caesar specials) Woody Allen.
In 1972, Gelbart was one of the main forces behind the creation of the television series M*A*S*H, writing the pilot (for which he received a "Developed for Television by..." credit) and then producing, often writing and occasionally directing the series for its first four seasons (1972–1976). M*A*S*H earned Gelbart a Peabody Award and an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series and went on to considerable commercial and critical success.
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Laura Benanti
Laura Benanti (born July 15, 1979) is an American actress of television, film and Broadway theatre noted for her award winning performance as Louise in the 2008 production of Gypsy.
Benanti was born in New York City, the daughter of Linda Wonneberger, a vocal coach and former actress, and Martin Vidnovic, a Broadway actor and singer. She is of Yugoslavian-German-Irish-Native American heritage. When quite young, her parents divorced and she moved to Kinnelon, New Jersey, with her mother and her stepfather Salvatore Benanti, a psychotherapist, whose name she took and whom she has referred to as her father.
Benanti remembers being "very serious" and "a bit of an ugly duckling" as a child, and was intensely interested in musical theatre, which distanced her from other children. (In 2008, Benanti told The New York Times that she drew on this loneliness in her portrayal of the neglected Louise in Gypsy.) Though her parents refused to let Laura audition for professional theatre, Laura appeared in several high school and community productions, including Evita (as Peron's mistress), Follies (as Young Heidi), and Into the Woods (as Cinderella). At 16, Benanti played the title role in her high school production of Hello, Dolly! and won a Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award for Outstanding Actress in a high school production. She graduated from Kinnelon High School in 1997.
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Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall ( /ˌlɔrən bəˈkɔːl/; born Betty Joan Perske, September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.
She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not (1944) and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in Bogart movies The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947), as well as a comedienne in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe and Designing Woman (1957) with Gregory Peck. Bacall has also worked on Broadway in musicals, gaining Tony Awards for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. Her performance in the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination.
In 1999, Bacall was ranked #20 of the 25 actresses on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list by the American Film Institute. In 2009, she was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Academy Honorary Award "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures."
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Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( /ˈbɜrnstaɪn/ US dict: bûrn′·stīn; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. According to The New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."
His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, as well as Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town and his own Mass.
Bernstein was also the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death. In addition, he was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard.
As a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and commercial success of West Side Story.
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Leslie Kritzer
Leslie Kritzer (born May 24, 1977) is an award-winning Broadway actress. She is from Livingston, New Jersey.
Kritzer, a 1999 graduate of the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music, has also appeared on Broadway in Hairspray and was the character Serena in Legally Blonde The Musical. Off-Broadway she was seen in The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Bat Boy and Godspell, and her regional credits include Vanities (Kathy), Babes in Arms (Baby Rose), and both Grease (Rizzo) and Funny Girl (Fanny) at Paper Mill Playhouse.
She received a 2006 Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for The Great American Trailer Park Musical, followed by a 2007 Special Achievement MAC Award for her show Leslie Kritzer Is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches, and a 2007 Clarence Derwent Award for her performance as Serena in Legally Blonde.
Kritzer starred in A Catered Affair, portraying Janey Hurley, the character played by Debbie Reynolds in the 1956 feature film of the same name.A Catered Affair had its Broadway run from March 2008 through July 27, 2008.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Miranda (born January 16, 1980) is a Puerto Rican-American composer, rapper, lyricist, and actor. He is most famous for writing and starring as Usnavi in the Broadway musical In the Heights, which opened on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in 2008 and for which he won the Tony Award as composer and lyricist.
Lin-Manuel was born in northern Manhattan, New York City, New York. He grew up in the Inwood section of Manhattan and is of Puerto Rican descent.
After graduating from Hunter College High School, Miranda went on to attend Wesleyan University and graduated in 2002. During this time, he co-founded a hip hop comedy troupe called Freestyle Love Supreme. He wrote the earliest draft of In the Heights in 1999, his sophomore year of college. After the show was accepted by Wesleyan's student theater company The Second Stage, Miranda worked on adding "freestyle rap ... bodegas, and salsa numbers." It played from 20 April to 22 April.
Miranda wrote and directed several other musicals at Wesleyan. He also acted in many other productions, ranging from musicals to Shakespeare.
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Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
Lionel Hampton was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1908, and was raised by his grandmother. Shortly after he was born, he and his mother moved to her hometown Birmingham, Alabama. He spent his early childhood in Kenosha, Wisconsin before he and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1916. As a youth, Hampton was a member of the Bud Billiken Club, an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which was off limits because of racial segregation. During the 1920s—while still a teenager—Hampton took xylophone lessons from Jimmy Bertrand and started playing drums. Hampton was raised Roman Catholic, and started out playing fife and drum at the Holy Rosary Academy near Chicago.
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Lisa Lambert
Lisa Lambert (born December 1962, in Washington D.C.) is an actress, comedy writer, and Tony Award winning composer, best known for writing the lyrics and music to The Drowsy Chaperone.
Lambert played in the movies Childstar and Slings and Arrows. Her works for television include Getting Along Famously and Skippy's Rangers- The Show They Never Gave.
Lambert also took part in stage productions, including Mirth, People Park, The Irish Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Bargain Musical, All Hams on Deck, Ouch My Toe, An American in Harris, An Awkward Evening with Martin and Johnson.
Lambert won the Tony Award for Best Original Score, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics for The Drowsy Chaperone.
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Liz Callaway
Liz Callaway (born April 13, 1961) is an American actress and singer, famous for providing the singing voices of many female characters in films, such as Anya/Anastasia in Anastasia, Odette in The Swan Princess, and the Adult Kiara in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.
Born in Chicago, Callaway made her Broadway debut in Stephen Sondheim's short-lived but now famous Merrily We Roll Along (1981). This began a long-term professional relationship with Sondheim, as Callaway has performed in a number of live concerts in his honor and also played the role of Young Sally in the Lincoln Center concert production of Follies with Mandy Patinkin, Barbara Cook, George Hearn, Lee Remick, Carol Burnett, Elaine Stritch and the New York Philharmonic. Follies was recorded live and also filmed as a documentary. This recording is considered to be the definitive recording of the legendary Sondheim, Goldman, Prince collaboration. Additional stage credits include Lizzie in Baby (for which she earned a Tony Award nomination), The Three Musketeers, The Spitfire Grill (for which she earned a Drama Desk Award nomination), Sunday in the Park with George, Evita, Cats, and Miss Saigon, for which she received another Tony Award nomination. Liz also performed in The Look of Love, a 2003 musical revue of the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Callaway also had her own children's television show on WNEV-TV in Boston, Ready to Go, which ran from 1987 to 1991. She left this series in order to begin rehearsals for Miss Saigon on Broadway.
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Lonny Price
Lonny Price (born March 9, 1959) is an American actor, writer, and director, primarily in theatre. He is known for making statements on current events in versions of his musicals. His acclaimed May 2008 New York Philharmonic production of Camelot was making a statement about the current war including having different ethnicities and modernized characters. Mr. Price stated this in an interview before Camelot opened.[citation needed]
Born in New York City, Price grew up in Metuchen, New Jersey. He attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts. His early career was spent performing in off-Broadway productions. His first major Broadway credit was the ill-fated Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along (1981), which underwent constant changes during an unusually long preview period and closed after only sixteen performances. He had better luck with his next project - the Athol Fugard play MASTER HAROLD...and the Boys, in which he portrayed a South African student opposite Danny Glover and Zakes Mokae as the family servants - which ran for eight months.
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Lynn Ahrens
Lynn Ahrens (born October 1, 1948) is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years. She won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for the Broadway musical Ragtime and was nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for the animated Twentieth Century Fox film "Anastasia." She is a mainstay writer for ABC-TV's "Schoolhouse Rock."
Ahrens was born in New York City, graduated from Neptune High School on the Jersey shore, and graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Journalism and English. She is Jewish. She began a career in advertising as a copywriter but was invited to work on a children's television show, and began writing songs for "Schoolhouse Rock". She subsequently worked as a freelance composer and singer of commercial music, and wrote and produced shows for children's television. She began writing for the musical theater in 1982.
Ahrens met Stephen Flaherty at the BMI Workshop in 1982 and they started working together the following year. Their first musical together was Lucky Stiff, which premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in April 1988. Their next musical was Once on This Island, which premiered on Broadway in 1990 and which was nominated for eight Tony Awards. My Favorite Year opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center in October 1992 but ran for only 36 performances.
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Maggie Smith
Dame Margaret Natalie "Maggie" Smith, DBE (born 28 December 1934) is an English film, stage and television actress. She has had an extensive career both on screen and in live theatre, and is known as one of Britain's pre-eminent actors. She made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 60 years. She has won numerous awards for acting, both for the stage and for film, including seven BAFTA Awards (five competitive awards and two special awards including the Bafta Fellowship in 1996), two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, two SAG Awards and a Tony Award. Dame Maggie is the only actor ever to win this collective of awards and is one of the most successful and acclaimed actors of the film era.
Her critically acclaimed films include Othello (1965), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), Travels with My Aunt (1972), California Suite (1978), Clash of the Titans (1981), A Room with a View (1985) and Gosford Park (2001). She has also appeared in a number of widely-popular films, including Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992) and as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series. She currently stars in the critically acclaimed drama Downton Abbey as Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, for which she has won an Emmy.
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Mandy Patinkin
Mandel Bruce "Mandy" Patinkin ( /pəˈtɪŋkɨn/; born November 30, 1952) is an award-winning American actor of stage and screen and a tenor vocalist. He is a noted interpreter of the musical works of Stephen Sondheim, and is best known for his work in musical theatre, originating iconic roles such as Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George, Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden, Burrs in The Wild Party and Che in the original Broadway production of Evita.
He has appeared in television series such as Chicago Hope, Dead Like Me and the first two seasons of Criminal Minds. He currently plays Saul Berenson in the Showtime series Homeland. His best-known film role was as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride in 1987. Other film roles include Alien Nation (1988), Yentl (1983), Dick Tracy, and The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999).
Patinkin was born in Chicago, Illinois, of Russian and Polish Jewish descent, the son of Doris "Doralee" Sinton, a homemaker, and Lester Patinkin, who worked for the People's Iron & Metal Company and the Scrap Corporation of America. His mother wrote Grandma Doralee Patinkin's Jewish Family Cookbook. Patinkin's cousins include:
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Marc Shaiman
Marc Shaiman (born October 22, 1959) is a Tony, Grammy, Emmy winning and Oscar nominated American composer, lyricist, arranger, and performer for films, television, and theatre. He is perhaps best known for writing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical version of the cult John Waters film Hairspray.
Shaiman was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Claire (née Goldfein) and William Robert Shaiman. He went to Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School. He lives in both Los Angeles and New York City. Shaiman and Scott Wittman have been partners in life and collaborators in theater since 1979.
Shaiman started his career as a theatre/cabaret musical director. He then became vocal arranger for Bette Midler, eventually becoming her musical director and co-producer of many of her recordings, including The Wind Beneath My Wings and From a Distance. He helped create the material for her performance on the penultimate Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His work with both Bette Midler and Billy Crystal led to his involvement on their films.
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Margaret Edson
Margaret Edson (born 4 July 1961, Washington, D.C.) is an American playwright. As a child, she wrote and acted in amateur plays with neighborhood friend Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She graduated with a B.A. in Renaissance History from Smith College, and received a master's in English literature from Georgetown University. Her jobs have included being a bicycle shop sales clerk and a volunteer ESL teacher.
Edson's first play was Wit, first produced in 1995 at South Coast Repertory in California, about a John Donne scholar who is hospitalized for and dying of ovarian cancer. Edson did use her work experience in a hospital as part of the background in writing the play. At the time of its first New York production in late 1998, Edson was a kindergarten teacher at Centennial Place Elementary School (Atlanta, Georgia). The play won her the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The award brought her a large amount of publicity, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. Edson has written a second play, Satisfied, whose subject is "country-gospel radio in Kentucky"--still, as of April 2008, unproduced.
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Maria Friedman
Maria Friedman (born 19 March 1960) is an English actress working in television, musical theatre, and concerts. She has won three Olivier Awards for her stage work.
Friedman was born Maria Freedman in the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, the daughter of Clair (née Sims), a concert pianist, and Leonard Friedman, a violinist for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Her father is from a Russian Jewish immigrant family and her mother is English. She began her education in Germany, and by the age of five moved with her family to England after the divorce of her parents.
She first gained fame when she won an Olivier Award for her one-woman cabaret, Maria Friedman By Special Arrangement and another Olivier Award starring in Stephen Sondheim's Passion in 1996, and later became one of the main leading ladies on the London Stage. She would later star in Chicago and Ragtime, both on the West End.
In 2004 she originated the role of Marian Halcombe in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Woman in White in the West End and on Broadway in 2005. In the 1999 film of Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, she played the narrator.
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Maria Riccetto
Maria Riccetto is an Uruguayan ballet dancer and a soloist with American Ballet Theatre (ABT).
Ms. Riccetto was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and began studying ballet at the Uruguay National Ballet School in 1990. She was hired as a professional dancer in 1995 by the national ballet company, S.O.D.R.E, dancing pieces by Rodolfo Lastra, Ivan Tenorio, Jaime Pintos, and others. In 1998, Riccetto was named "Revelation of the Year" by Uruguayan dance critic Washington Roldan, and received the Elena Smirnova Prize from Enrique Honorio Destaville, an Argentine ballet reviewer. Later that year she attended the North Carolina School of the Arts on a full scholarship. There she performed in Grand Pas Romantique (choreographed and staged by Fernando Bujones) and Intermezzo (choreographed by Eliot Feld).
She also danced the roles of the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Snow Queen in The Nutcracker. In 1999, when the production was performed at the Hungarian National Academy, Ms. Riccetto was invited to Budapest to reprise her role as the Sugar Plum Fairy, dancing with Gabor Szigeti, a soloist with the Hungarian National Ballet. Riccetto was as a guest artist at the 25th Anniversary Gala for the Uruguay National Ballet School and was invited by that country's First Lady to dance in Montevideo and Punta Del Este. In August 1999, Riccetto joined American Ballet Theatre's corps de ballet and three years later she was promoted to soloist.
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Maria Tallchief
Elizabeth Maria Tallchief (born January 24, 1925) was the first Native American to become prima ballerina. From 1942 to 1947 she danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but she is even better known for her time with the New York City Ballet, from its founding in 1947 through 1965. Known professionally as Maria Tallchief, her family called her Betty Marie.
She was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma to a father who was a chief in the Osage Nation and a Scots-Irish mother.
Of her childhood she wrote, "I was a good student and fit in at Sacred Heart (Catholic school). But in many ways, I was a typical Indian girl — shy, docile, introverted. I loved being outdoors and spent most of my time wandering around my big front yard, where there was an old swing and a garden. I'd also ramble around the grounds of our summer cottage hunting for arrowheads in the grass. Finding one made me shiver with excitement. Mostly, I longed to be in the pasture, running around where the horses were...".
She enjoyed music, dancing and ballet. Her desire to pursue a career in the arts was a challenging dream for a Native American child in those days. The family moved to Beverly Hills, California in 1933, where Maria studied ballet with Bronislava Nijinska for five years. Madame Nijinska's philosophy of discipline made sense to Tallchief. "When you sleep, sleep like a ballerina. Even on the street waiting for the bus, stand like ballerina".
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Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne (born January 16, 1934, Bradford, Pennsylvania) is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in roles requiring a large sound, beauty of tone, excellent breath support, and the ability to execute difficult coloratura passages.
Horne was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, but moved with her parents to Long Beach, California, when she was 11. At the age of 13, she became part of the newly formed Los Angeles Concert Youth Chorus. She attended the University of Southern California where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. She is an alumna of Long Beach Polytechnic High School and returned in 1989 in a performance to benefit its music program. As a high school student, Marilyn was part of the St. Luke's Choir of Long Beach under the direction of William Ripley Dorr. This prestigious choir often worked for the movie studios and recorded on Capitol Records. Marilyn and her sister Gloria were part of St. Luke's Quartet along with tenor, Bob James and baritone, Philip D. Haynes.
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Marilyn Maye
Marilyn Maye (born April 10, 1928) is an American cabaret singer and musical theatre actress. She began her career as a young child performing in Kansas in both live concerts and on the radio. After graduating from high school, she moved to Chicago where she drew the attention of Steve Allen, performing first on The Steve Allen Show and later The Tonight Show. She holds the distinction of being the most frequently heard singer in the history of the latter program. She made numerous recordings with RCA during the 1960s, after which she has had a highly successful career as a cabaret artist, continuing to this day. She has also occasionally appeared on the stage in musicals.
Born Marilyn Maye McLaughlin to Lyle (or Kenneth) and Lila (or Lyla) McLaughlin in Wichita, Kansas, she began her career as a child, competing in amateur contests in Topeka, Kansas, where her father, a pharmacist, owned a drugstore. She was accompanied on piano by her mother, who had named her daughter for her own favorite entertainer, musical theater star Marilyn Miller. In 1942, after her parents divorced, she moved with her mother to Des Moines, Iowa. She began her musical training with her mother at the age of 3. At the age of 9 she began taking voice lessons with Rosamond Nyman, a teacher of classical singing, in Topeka.
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Marin Mazzie
Marin Joy Mazzie (born October 9, 1960) is an American actress and singer known for her work in musical theater. She was nominated for the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Olivier Award for her role as Lilli/Katharine in Kiss Me, Kate, and won the Outer Critics Circle Award. In addition to appearing in many musical stage productions, Mazzie also performs in concert with her husband, Jason Danieley.
Mazzie was born in Rockford, Illinois and graduated from Western Michigan University, where she received degrees in theater and music. With an early interest in the theatre, Mazzie began to perform and sing in church choir at the age of 8 and to study voice at the age of 12. She continued to act in school and at college and in summer stock, where she was an apprentice at the Barn Theatre in Augusta, Michigan.
After graduating from college in 1982, Mazzie moved to New York City and made her New York stage debut in a 1983 Equity Library Theatre revival of the 1948 musical Where's Charley? as "Kitty Verdun". She appeared in the 1991 off-Broadway Kander and Ebb revue And The World Goes 'Round and the subsequent 10-month national tour the following year. She went on to play starring roles in over a half dozen Broadway shows and also developed a cabaret act and made appearances in television.
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Marion Williams
Marion Williams (August 29, 1927 – July 2, 1994) was an American gospel singer.
Marion Williams was born in Miami, Florida, to a religiously devout mother and musically inclined father. She left school when she was nine years old to help support the family, and worked as a maid, a nurse, and in factories and laundries. She began singing in front of auiences while young. As was common in the area, Williams learned African-American blues and jazz, alongside Caribbean calypso. Poverty caused Williams to leave school at fourteen, working with her mother at a laundry. She was singing at church and on street corners, inspired by a wide range of musicians, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Smith Jubilee Singers. She stuck with gospel in spite of pressure to switch to popular blues tunes or the opera.
In 1946, while visiting a friend in Philadelphia, Williams happened to sing before an audience that included Clara and Gertrude Ward. They recognized her talent and offered her a job. A year later, she became part of the famous Ward Singers. Her growling, hands-on-the-hips vocal style made her the group's undisputed star.
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Mark Jacoby
Mark Jacoby (born May 21, 1947 in Johnson City, Tennessee, USA) is a Broadway performer. He has achieved fame from his leading roles in Show Boat, The Phantom of the Opera and Ragtime. He is currently starring as "The Wizard of Oz" on the First North American Tour of Wicked.
Sweet Charity (Revival)
The Phantom of the Opera (Original)
Grand Hotel (Original)
Show Boat (Revival)
Ragtime (Original)
Man of La Mancha (Revival)
Sweeney Todd (Revival)
Elf (Broadway musical)
Wicked (1st National Tour)
Mark Jacoby lent his voice to the release of some of the cast recordings to the musicals he starred in.
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Marsha Norman
Marsha Norman (born September 21, 1947) is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple.
Norman was born in Louisville, Kentucky. As a child, she read, played the piano and had an imaginary friend named Bettering. She later began attending productions by the newly-founded Actor's Theatre of Louisville. After graduating from Agnes Scott College with a degree in philosophy, she began working as a journalist for The Louisville Times newspaper, and writing for Kentucky Educational Television. She also taught young children and adolescents in mental institutions and hospitals. These were perhaps her biggest influence on her writing, especially a 13-year-old girl who influenced her play Getting Out. She also taught English at the J. Graham Brown School in Louisville.
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Martin Charnin
Martin Charnin (born November 24, 1934) is an American lyricist, writer, and theatre director. Charnin's best-known work is as conceiver, director and lyricist of the hit musical Annie.
Born in New York City, he graduated from The High School of Music & Art and then from The Cooper Union, where he got his BFA. Charnin began his theatrical career as a performer, appearing as "Big Deal", one of the Jets in the original production of West Side Story. He played the role for 1000 performances on Broadway and on the road. After completing his duties in West Side Story, he wrote music and lyrics for numerous off-Broadway and Cabaret revues, many of them for Julius Monk. He then went on to write, direct, and produce nightclub acts for Dionne Warwick, Nancy Wilson, Mary Travers, Larry Kert, Jose Ferrer, and Leslie Uggams. His first Broadway musical was in 1963, as the lyricist for Hot Spot starring Judy Holliday, with music by Mary Rodgers.
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Martin Gottfried
Martin Gottfried is an American critic, columnist and author.
Gottfried is a 1959 graduate of Columbia College in New York City, and attended Columbia Law School for three semesters, next spending one year with U.S. Army Military Intelligence. Gottfried began his writing career as the classical music critic for The Village Voice, doubling as an off-Broadway reviewer for Womens Wear Daily, a position that made him the youngest member of the New York Drama Critics Circle in the organization's history.
In 1968, Little, Brown and Company published his first book, A Theater Divided, a study of post-World War II American theater. The book won the highest honor in dramatic criticism, the George Jean Nathan Award. In 1970 Putnam published Opening Nights, a collection of his essays. By then, he had become a regular contributor to the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times' Sunday edition.
In 1974, he became the drama critic for the New York Post. Four years later, he "Americanized" the West End musical Bar Mitzvah Boy for an off-Broadway production.
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Marvin Hamlisch
Marvin Frederick Hamlisch (born June 2, 1944) is an American composer. He is one of only eleven people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony. He is also one of only two people to have won those four prizes and also a Pulitzer Prize (the other is Richard Rodgers). Hamlisch has also won two Golden Globes.
Hamlisch was born in New York City to Viennese Jewish parents: Lilly Schachter and Max Hamlisch. His father was an accordionist and bandleader. Hamlisch was a child prodigy, and by age five he began mimicking music he heard on the radio on the piano. A few months before he turned seven, in 1951, he was accepted into what is now the Juilliard School Pre-College Division. His first job was as a rehearsal pianist for Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. Shortly after that, he was hired by producer Sam Spiegel to play piano at Spiegel's parties. This connection led to his first film score, The Swimmer. His favorite musicals growing up were My Fair Lady, Gypsy, West Side Story, and Bye Bye Birdie.
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Mary Rodgers
Mary Rodgers (born January 11, 1931) is an American composer of musicals and an author of children's books. She is a daughter of composer Richard Rodgers and his wife, Dorothy Rodgers, as is her sister, Linda Rodgers Emory. She attended the private girls' school Brearley School in New York City and majored in music at Wellesley College.
Rodgers wrote the music for musicals and revues including Once Upon a Mattress (1959), From A to Z (1960), Hot Spot (1963), The Mad Show (1966), Working (1978), and Phyllis Newman's one-woman show The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979). A revue of Rodgers' music titled Hey, Love, conceived and directed by Richard Maltby, Jr. ran in June 1993 at Eighty-Eight's in New York City.
She eventually transitioned into writing children's books, most notably, Freaky Friday (1972), which was made into a feature film (released 1977) for which Rodgers wrote the screenplay. She later explained, "I had a pleasant talent but not an incredible talent....I was not my father or my son. And you have to abandon all kinds of things." Rodgers' children's books include Summer Switch, A Billion for Boris (later republished under the title ESP TV), and The Rotten Book, and she contributed songs to the landmark children's album Free to Be... You and Me.
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Matt Cavenaugh
William Matthew "Matt" Cavenaugh (born May 31, 1978 in Jonesboro, Arkansas) is an American stage, film, and television actor. He graduated from Ithaca College with a BFA in 2001. Cavenaugh's film debut was in Little Monsters as a child actor, and has more recently played starring roles on Broadway and Off Broadway. He played Tony in the revival of West Side Story at the Palace Theatre on Broadway from February 23, 2009-December 13, 2009. Cavenaugh married actress Jenny Powers on August 23, 2009 at the Gate of Heaven Catholic Church in Boston, Massachusetts.
Sondheim! The Birthday Concert (2010)
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Maury Yeston
Maury Yeston (born October 23, 1945) is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.
He is known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine. Yeston also wrote a significant amount of the music and most of the lyrics to the Tony-nominated musical Grand Hotel in 1989, which was nominated for best score. His musical version of the novel The Phantom of the Opera called Phantom (not to be confused with Andrew Lloyd Webber's version) has enjoyed numerous productions in the U.S. and around the world. He has also written a number of other Off-Broadway musicals, a song cycle, a Cello Concerto, and other pieces.
Yeston serves on the Board of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also President of the Kleban Foundation, serves on the editorial boards of Musical Quarterly and the Kurt Weill Foundation Publication Project and on the advisory board of the Yale University Press Broadway Series. He was the Director of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York City for two decades beginning in 1982.
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Maxwell Anderson
James Maxwell Anderson (15 December 1888 – 28 February 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.
Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent. His family initially lived on his maternal grandmother Sheperd's farm in Atlantic, then moved to Andover, Ohio, where his father became a railroad fireman while studying to become a minister. They moved often, to follow their father's ministerial posts, and Maxwell was frequently sick, missing a great deal of school. He used his time sick in bed to read voraciously, and both his parents and Aunt Emma were storytellers, which contributed to Anderson's love of literature.
During a visit to his grandmother's house in Atlantic, at age 11, he met the first love of his life, Hallie Loomis, a slightly older girl from a wealthier family. His autobiographical tale, Morning, Winter and Night told of rape, incest and sadomasochism on the farm. It was published under a pseudonym, John Nairne Michealson, to prevent offending family. The Andersons bounced between Andover, Ohio, Richmond Center, Ohio, Townville, Pa., Edinboro, Pa., McKeesport, Pa., New Brighton, Pa., Harrisburg, Pa., to Jamestown, North Dakota in 1907, where Anderson attended Jamestown High School, graduating in 1908.
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Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner, The 2000 Year Old Man. In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released. His most well known films include The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I and Spaceballs. More recently he has had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers. He was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005.
Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.
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Meryle Secrest
Meryle Secrest is an award-winning American biographer, primarily of American artists and art collectors.
Secrest was born in Bath, England and educated there. Her family emigrated to Canada, where she began her career as a journalist. She worked as women's editor for the Hamilton News in Ontario, Canada; shortly thereafter she was named "Most Promising Young Writer" by the Canadian Women's Press Club. In 1964 she began writing for the Washington Post, doing profile interviews of notable personalities from Leonard Bernstein to Anaïs Nin.
In 1975 she left the Post to write books full-time. Since then she has written a number of critically acclaimed biographies; her subjects have included Frank Lloyd Wright, Joseph Lord Duveen, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Salvador Dalí, Kenneth Clark, Bernard Berenson, Romaine Brooks, and Richard Rodgers. She has also published an autobiography entitled Shoot the Widow.
She now lives in Washington, D.C.
Secrest's Being Bernard Berenson was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and for the American Book Awards in 1981. In 2006 she received the National Humanities Medal.
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Mia Farrow
Mia Farrow (born February 9, 1945) is an American actress, singer, humanitarian, and fashion model.
Farrow first gained wide acclaim for her role as Allison MacKenzie in the soap opera Peyton Place, and for her subsequent short-lived marriage to Frank Sinatra. An early film role, as the woman pregnant with Satan's baby in 1968's Rosemary's Baby, saw her portrayal nominated for many awards.
Farrow has appeared in more than 45 films and won numerous awards, including a Golden Globe award (and seven additional Golden Globe nominations), three BAFTA Film Award nominations, and a win for best actress at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. Farrow is also known for her extensive humanitarian work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. She is involved in humanitarian activities in Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic. In 2008, Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world.
Farrow was born as Maria de Lourdes Villiers Farrow in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Australian film director John Farrow and Irish actress Maureen O'Sullivan. She was raised Roman Catholic. Her sisters are Prudence and actors Stephanie and Tisa. She has three brothers: Michael Damien (1939–1958), Patrick Joseph (1942–2009) and John Charles (born 1946).[citation needed]
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Michael Bennett
Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 – July 2, 1987) was an American musical theater director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. He won seven Tony Awards for his choreography and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for an additional eleven.
Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. In 1976, he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Choreography for the Pulitzer Prize–winning phenomenon A Chorus Line. Bennett, under the aegis of producer Joseph Papp, created A Chorus Line based on a precedent-setting workshop process which he pioneered. He also directed and co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Michael Peters.
Bennett was born Michael Bennett DiFiglia in Buffalo, New York, the son of Helen (Ternoff), a secretary, and Salvatore Joseph DiFiglia, a factory worker. His father was Roman Catholic and his mother was Jewish. He studied dance and choreography in his teens and staged a number of shows in his local high school before dropping out to accept the role of Baby John in the US and European tours of West Side Story.
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Michael Cristofer
Michael Ivan Cristofer (born January 22, 1945, Trenton, New Jersey) is an American playwright, filmmaker and actor. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play for The Shadow Box in 1977.
Cristofer was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony Award for the Broadway production of his play, The Shadow Box. Subsequent to New York, the play was produced in every major American city and worldwide from Europe to the Far East. Other plays include Breaking Up at Primary Stages; Ice at Manhattan Theatre Club; Black Angel at Circle Repertory Company; The Lady and the Clarinet starring Stockard Channing, produced by the Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf Theater, Off-Broadway and on the London Fringe, and Amazing Grace starring Marsha Mason which received the American Theater Critics Award as the best play produced in the United States during the 1996-97 season.
Cristofer's film work includes the screenplays for The Shadow Box directed by Paul Newman (Golden Globe Award, Emmy nomination), Falling in Love, with Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, The Witches of Eastwick with Jack Nicholson, The Bonfire of the Vanities directed by Brian De Palma, Breaking Up starring Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek, and Casanova starring Heath Ledger. His directing credits include Gia, for HBO Pictures starring Angelina Jolie, Mercedes Ruehl and Faye Dunaway which was nominated for five Emmys and for which he won a Director's Guild Award. He next directed Body Shots starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Jerry O'Connell, Amanda Peet and Tara Reid and Original Sin starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas which was released in 2001. He is currently preparing to direct Fade Out from his own screenplay.
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Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz (December 24, 1886 – April 10, 1962) was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early credits as Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States, many of them cinema classics, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Dodge City, The Sea Hawk, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday of the Warner Bros. studio in the 1930s and '40s.
He was less successful from the late 1940s onwards, when he attempted to move from studio direction into production and freelance work, but he continued working until shortly before his death.
Curtiz was born Kertész Kaminer Manó to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary). He claimed to have been born December 24, 1886. Both the date and the year are open to doubt: he was fond of telling tall stories about his early years, including that he had run away from home to join the circus and that he had been a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the 1912 Olympic Games, but he seems to have had a conventional middle-class upbringing. He studied at Markoszy University and the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, Budapest, before beginning his career as an actor and director as Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912.
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Michele Pawk
Michele Pawk (born November 16, 1961) is an American actress and singer.
Born in Butler, Pennsylvania, Pawk attended Allegheny College and the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, after which she spent a year working in a musical revue at Disney World. In 1988, she made her Broadway debut in a short-lived musical entitled Mail, but it wasn't until 1992 that she made her mark with her performance in the Ira and George Gershwin-inspired production Crazy for You, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical. From there she went on to three successful revivals—Merrily We Roll Along (1994), Chicago (1996), and Cabaret (1998) - and an original musical, Seussical (2000), based on the works of Dr. Seuss.
In 2002, Pawk earned critical raves for her performance in Hollywood Arms, the Carrie Hamilton – Carol Burnett play adapted from Burnett's memoir, One More Time. Her portrayal of an alcoholic who dreams of success as a movie magazine writer, a character based on Burnett's mother, won her the Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play. She was featured in Hairspray as Velma Von Tussle, after appearing in Mamma Mia! as "Donna" (Oct 19, 2005 - Feb 20, 2006).
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Mike Ockrent
Mike Ockrent (18 June 1946 - 2 December 1999) was a British stage director, well-known both for his Broadway musicals and smaller niche plays. He was educated at Highgate School. Through directing Educating Rita and Follies, he became an established figure in London theatre. In 1986 he made a successful transition to New York with Me and My Girl that earned several Tony Award nominations. In later life Ockrent worked in film, mainly straight-to-TV movies.
In 1992 Ockrent worked with Susan Stroman on Crazy for You and other productions. They were married in 1996 and remained so until Ockrent's death from leukemia in New York in 1999.
A charitable trust now exists in his name. The trust aims to give access to theatre for children with cancer, involving nights at the theatre with visits backstage afterwards. It also funds leukaemia research, "both mainstream and 'alternative'".
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Mitch Leigh
Mitch Leigh (born January 30, 1928) is an American musical theatre composer and theatrical producer best known for the musical Man Of La Mancha.
Leigh was born in Brooklyn, New York) as Irwin Michnick. He graduated from Yale in 1951 with a Bachelor of Music, and in 1952 received his Master of Music under Paul Hindemith.
He began his career as a jazz musician and writing commercials for radio and television. In 1965 he teamed with lyricist Joe Darion and writer Dale Wasserman to write a musical based on Wasserman's 1959 television play, I, Don Quixote. The resulting show, the musical Man Of La Mancha opened on Broadway in 1965 and in its original engagement ran for 2,328 performances.
Leigh's next show was Chu Chem. This show followed Man of La Mancha by exactly one year, but closed on the road. Produced by Leigh, it opened on Broadway in 1989 for 68 performances.
Cry for Us All, based on the play, Hogan's Goat, opened on Broadway in 1970 but ran for 9 performances. Leigh was the producer as well as composer. His next musical was Home Sweet Homer, starring Yul Brynner, which opened on Broadway officially in January 1976 but closed after 1 performance. He produced as well as was the composer for Saravà which ran for 101 performances in 1979. Leigh both produced and directed the 1985 revival of The King and I starring Yul Brynner. Lee Adams asked Leigh to collaborate on a musical, entitled Mike, about producer Mike Todd, but it closed on its pre-Broadway tryout in 1988. After renaming it Ain't Broadway Grand!, the show made it to Broadway, but closed after 25 performances in 1993.
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Monica Mason
Dame Monica Mason DBE (born 6 September 1941) is a ballet dancer and has been the director of The Royal Ballet, since 2002.
Monica Margaret Mason was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1941. A talented dancer, she moved to Britain at the age of 14 to join the Royal Ballet School.
At the age of 16 Mason joined the Royal Ballet as the Company's youngest member, and became a principal dancer in 1968. She worked closely with the choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who created the roles of Lescaut's Mistress in Manon, Calliope Rag in Elite Syncopations, Summer in The Four Seasons and the Midwife in Rituals for her.
Mason was also given the role of the Chosen Maiden in The Rite of Spring that had been originally created by Diaghilev for Lydia Sokolova in the 1920s. Her last leading role was as Nursey in Isadora by Kenneth MacMillan, in 1981, although she continued to appear in mime roles as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet for some time after that.
Following her retirement as a principal dancer, Mason continued to work for the Royal Ballet company and in 1984 she was appointed Principal Répétiteur to the company. In 1991 she became Assistant Director of the company under Sir Anthony Dowell. Following the company's move to its new headquarters at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden, Mason replaced Dowell's successor, Ross Stretton, as Director in late 2002. She recently announced her retirement and will leave The Royal Ballet in August 2012
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Morton Gould
Morton Gould (December 10, 1913 – February 21, 1996) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, and pianist.
Born in Richmond Hill, New York, Gould was recognized early as a child prodigy with abilities in improvisation and composition. His first composition was published at age six. Gould studied at the Institute of Musical Art, although his most important teachers were Abby Whiteside and Vincent Jones.
During the Depression, Gould, while a teenager, worked in New York City playing piano in movie theaters, as well as with vaudeville acts. When Radio City Music Hall opened, Gould was hired as the staff pianist. By 1935, he was conducting and arranging orchestral programs for New York's WOR radio station, where he reached a national audience via the Mutual Broadcasting System, combining popular programming with classical music.
In the 1940s, Gould appeared on the Cresta Blanca Carnival program as well as The Chrysler Hour on CBS where he reached an audience of millions.
Gould composed Broadway scores such as Billion Dollar Baby and Arms and the Girl; film music such as Delightfully Dangerous, Cinerama Holiday, and Windjammer; music for television series such as World War One; and ballet scores including Interplay, Fall River Legend, and I'm Old Fashioned.
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N. Richard Nash
N. Richard Nash (June 8, 1913 – December 11, 2000) was a writer and dramatist best known for writing Broadway shows, including The Rainmaker.
Nash was born Nathan Richard Nusbaum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the son of S. L. Nusbaum, a bookbinder, and his wife Jenny (née Singer). He worked as a ten dollar per match boxer and graduated from South Philadelphia high school in 1930 before entering the University of Pennsylvania to study English and philosophy.
Nash published two books on philosophy, The Athenian Spirit and The Wounds of Sparta. Nash wrote his first play, Parting at Imsdorf, in 1940, which won the Maxwell Anderson Verse Drama Award. He next penned the Shakespearian-themed comedy The Second Best Bed, produced on Broadway in 1946. The highly acclaimed drama led to him writing more shows, including The Young and Fair (1948), See the Jaguar (1952, for which he won the International Drama Award in Cannes and the Prague Award), and The Rainmaker (1954, starring Geraldine Page; revived on Broadway in 1999). The Rainmaker, a full-length play, had originally been a Philco Television Playhouse one-act 1953 television production. It was translated to over 40 languages and made into a 1956 Hollywood film starring Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn, and a 1982 full-length TV production. The play was made into a Broadway musical, 110 in the Shade.
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Nathan Gunn
Nathan T. Gunn (born November 26, 1970) is an American operatic baritone.
Gunn was born in South Bend, Indiana.
He has appeared in many of world's well-known opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Opera, Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Paris Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Glyndebourne Festival, and the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. He has also appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival.
While he is noted for his vocal prowess and acting, Gunn has received almost more fame for his physique, a peculiar feat for an opera singer. In 2008, he was featured in People magazine's list of "The Sexiest Men Alive."
Was was appointed a tenured professor of voice at the University of Illinois, beginning in the fall semester of 2007. His wife, Julie Jordan Gunn, who holds a doctorate in accompaniment from University of Illinois, was also appointed an associate professor in accompaniment at the University of Illinois.
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Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane (born February 3, 1956) is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and his voice work in The Lion King and Stuart Little. In 2006, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2008, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Lane was born Joseph Lane in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of Irish American Catholic parents. He was named after his uncle, a Jesuit priest. His father, Daniel, was a truck driver and an aspiring tenor who died from alcoholism when Lane was eleven; his mother, Nora, was a housewife and secretary who suffered from manic-depression, and died in 2000. He has two brothers, Robert and Daniel. Lane attended Roman Catholic schools in Jersey City, including Jesuit-run St. Peter's Preparatory High School, where he was selected Best Actor in 1974.[citation needed]
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Nathanael West
Nathanael West, born Nathan von Wallenstein Weinstein, (October 17, 1903 – December 22, 1940) was an American author, screenwriter and satirist.
Nathanael West (born Nathan Weinstein) was born in New York City, the first child of German-speaking Russian Jewish parents from Lithuania who maintained an upper middle class household in a Jewish neighborhood on the Upper West Side. West displayed little ambition in academics, dropping out of high school and only gaining admission into Tufts College by forging his high school transcript. After being expelled from Tufts, West got into Brown University by appropriating the transcript of a fellow Tufts student who was also named Nathan Weinstein. Although West did little schoolwork at Brown, he read extensively. He ignored the realist fiction of his American contemporaries in favor of French surrealists and British and Irish poets of the 1890s, in particular Oscar Wilde. West's interests focused on unusual literary style as well as unusual content. He became interested in Christianity and mysticism, as experienced or expressed through literature and art. West's classmates at Brown ironically nicknamed him "Pep" after a school trip where after only a few minutes of walking he quickly ran out of breath. West himself acknowledged and made fun of his lack of physical prowess in recounting the story of a baseball game where he cost his team the game. Wells Root, a close friend of West, remembers hearing this tale half a dozen times, recalling that everyone had placed bets on the game, which came down to the final inning with the score tied and the enemy at bat with two outs. At that point the batter hit a long fly towards West:
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Neil Simon
Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that were made into movies. He also has written the books for several musicals, including Sweet Charity.
Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City to Irving Simon, a garment salesman, and his wife Mamie. He was their second son and grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan during the Great Depression. His father often abandoned the family, causing financial and emotional difficulties. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School and graduated at the age of sixteen.
He attended New York Universitybriefly from 1944 to 1945, where he was enlisted in the Army Air Force Reserve training program. He was assigned to Lowry Air Force Base during 1945 and attended the University of Denver from 1945 to 1946. He was a sports editor for the military magazine Rev-Meter.
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Nicholas Dante
Nicholas Dante (November 22, 1941 – May 21, 1991) was an American dancer and writer, best-known for having co-written the book of the musical A Chorus Line.
Born Conrado Morales in New York City to Puerto Rican parents, his early career was spent dancing in the chorus of Broadway musicals such as Applause and Ambassador.
In 1974, he was approached by friend Michael Bennett who invited him to the sessions which led to the basis of material for the book of a musical about Broadway "gypsies", the dancers who serve as a backdrop for the leading performers. Eventually, collaborating with James Kirkwood, Jr., the result was A Chorus Line, which earned him the 1976 Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Book of a Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In particular, the story of Paul, the homosexual Puerto Rican dancer whose early career consisted of working in a drag show, was based primarily on Dante. The actor who originated the role on the famous monologue, Sammy Williams, won a Best Featured Actor in a Musical award in 1976 for the role. Dante played the role himself later on.[citation needed]
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Norman Gimbel
Norman Gimbel is an American lyricist of popular songs, television and movie themes whose writing career includes such titles as "Sway", "Canadian Sunset", "Summer Samba", "The Girl from Ipanema", "Killing Me Softly With His Song", "Meditation" and "I Will Wait for You", along with an Oscar for "It Goes Like It Goes" - from the film Norma Rae. During 1984 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
A native of Brooklyn, Norman Gimbel was self-taught in music and following initial employment with music publisher David Blum, progressed to become a contract songwriter with Edwin H. Morris Music. Small successes and moderate fame came as a result of lively novelty songs "Ricochet", which was popularized in a 1953 recording by Teresa Brewer from which was developed the 1954 Judy Canova film Ricochet Romance, and "A Whale of a Tale", sung by Kirk Douglas in another 1954 production, Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Greater success was earned with Dean Martin's recording of "Sway", which reached #6 on the UK Singles Chart, followed by his first big success, Andy Williams' rendition of "Canadian Sunset", which scored to #1 in 1956.
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Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II ( /ˈhæmərstaɪn/; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs. Hammerstein was the lyricist and playwright in his partnerships; his collaborators wrote the music. Hammerstein collaborated with composers Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg, but his most famous collaboration was with Richard Rodgers.
Hammerstein was born Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein in New York City, the son of Alice (née Nimmo) and William Hammerstein. His grandfather was German-born Jewish theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein I, and his mother was the daughter of Scottish and English parents. Hammerstein was raised an Episcopalian.[citation needed]
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Patricia Elliott
Patricia Elliott (born July 21, 1942; Gunnison, Colorado) is an American actress. She graduated from South High School in Denver.
With many appearances on television, film and stage, Elliott currently portrays Renee Divine Buchanan on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, a role she has played on-and-off since 1987. She won a Tony for her performance in the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music.
She played the role of Dorine in the 1977 Tony-nominated Circle in the Square revival of Molière's Tartuffe. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her performance. She reprised her role when the production was restaged for television on PBS in 1978.
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Patti LuPone
Patti Ann LuPone (born April 21, 1949) is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performance as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les Misérables.
LuPone was born in Northport, New York, on Long Island, the daughter of Angela Louise (née Patti), a college library administrator, and Orlando Joseph LuPone, a school administrator. Her great-grand-aunt was the celebrated nineteenth-century opera singer Adelina Patti. Her brother Robert LuPone is an actor, dancer, and director who originated the role of Zach the choreographer in A Chorus Line. Her other brother William LuPone is a teacher. When they were young, they performed on Long Island as the LuPone Trio. She is of Italian/Abruzzese descent and a graduate of Northport High School, where she studied under the musical direction of voice coach Esther Scott.
LuPone was part of the first graduating class of Juilliard's Drama Division (1968-1972: Group 1), which also included actors Kevin Kline and David Ogden Stiers. She graduated from Juilliard in 1972 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
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Paul Gemignani
Paul Gemignani is an award-winning American musical director with a career on Broadway and West End theatre spanning over thirty years.
Gemignani began his career in 1971 as a replacement musical director for Stephen Sondheim's Follies, eventually leading the cast on the subsequent tour. Since then, he has been the musical director for over 38 Broadway and West End musicals, including the following Tony Award-winning productions:A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd (1979), Evita (1979), Jerome Robbins' Broadway (1989), Crazy for You (1992), Passion (1994), Kiss Me, Kate (1999), Into the Woods (2002), and Assassins (2004). Other well-known Broadway productions have included Candide (1974), Grind (1975), Pacific Overtures (1976), Side By Side By Sondheim (1977), On the Twentieth Century (1978), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), A Doll's Life (1982), Zorba (1983), The Rink (1984), Pulitzer Prize winner Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Big: the musical (1996), High Society (1998), The Frogs (2004), and 110 in the Shade (2007).
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Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver, auto racing team owner, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2011, these donations exceeded $300 million.
Newman was born in Shaker Heights (a suburb of Cleveland). He was the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková) and Arthur Sigmund Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. His father was Jewish (Paul's paternal grandparents, Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, were immigrants from Hungary and Poland). His mother, who practiced Christian Science, was born to a Slovak Roman Catholic family at Humenné, Ptičie (formerly Pticsie) in the former Kingdom of Hungary, Austria–Hungary (now Humenné in Slovakia). Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, stating that "it's more of a challenge". Newman's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur, who later became a producer and production manager.
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Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is a grammy award winning American singer-songwriter, poet and guitarist.
Simon's international fame and success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, launched in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts: "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Bridge Over Troubled Water". The duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity, and Simon began a successful solo career, recording three highly acclaimed albums over the next five years. In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music. Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony in 1980 and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman in 1998.
Simon has earned 12 Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time magazine. Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. In 1986 Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees.
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Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-20th-century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes.
As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964, and The Seekers in 1966. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more singable "We shall overcome".
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Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend (born 19 May 1945) is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career. His career with The Who spans more than 40 years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the most influential bands of the 1960s and 1970s, and, according to Eddie Vedder, "possibly the greatest live band ever."
Townshend is the primary songwriter for The Who, having written well over 100 songs for the band's 11 studio albums, including concept albums and the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus popular rock and roll radio staples like Who's Next, and dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilations like Odds & Sods. He has also written over 100 songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs. Although known primarily as a guitarist, he also plays other instruments such as keyboards, banjo, accordion, synthesiser, bass guitar and drums, on his own solo albums, several Who albums, and as a guest contributor to a wide array of other artists' recordings. Townshend has never had formal lessons in any of the instruments he plays.
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Philip G. Epstein
Philip G. Epstein (August 22, 1909 – February 7, 1952) was an American screenwriter most known for his adaptation in partnership with his twin brother, Julius, and others, of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's which became the Academy Award-winning screenplay of the film Casablanca (1942).
Epstein was born in New York City and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father was a livery stable owner in the days when horses were still common on the streets of the city. He attended Pennsylvania State College (now Penn State University), gaining his degree in 1931.
Jack Warner, head of Warner Brothers, had a love-hate relationship with the Epstein brothers. He could not argue with their commercial success, but he deplored their pranks, their work habits and the hours they kept. In 1952, Warner gave the brothers' names to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). They never testified before the committee, but on a HUAC questionnaire, when asked if they ever were members of a "subversive organization," they wrote, "Yes. Warner Brothers."
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Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254–184 BC), commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine ( /ˈplɔːtaɪn/) refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his.
Not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus' early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Umbria in central Italy, in around 254 BC. According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the names "Maccius" (a clownish stock-character in popular farces) and "Plautus" (a term meaning either "flat-footed" or "flat-eared," like the ears of a hound). Tradition holds that he made enough money to go into the nautical business, but that the venture collapsed. He is then said to have worked as a manual laborer and to have studied Greek drama—particularly the New Comedy of Menander—in his leisure. His studies allowed him to produce his plays, which were released between c. 205 and 184 BC. Plautus attained such a popularity that his name alone became a hallmark of theatrical success.
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Raquel Welch
Jo Raquel Tejada (born September 5, 1940), better known as Raquel Welch, is an American actress, author and sex symbol. Welch came to attention as a "new-star" on the 20th Century-Fox lot in the mid-1960s. She posed iconically in an animal skin bikini for the British-release One Million Years B.C. (1966), for which she may be best known. She later starred in Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969) and Myra Breckinridge (1970). Today, Welch is a noticeable face of television commercials for Foster Grant sunglasses and reading glasses.
Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, Illinois, the older sister to brother James and sister Gayle. She is the daughter of Josephine Sarah (née Hall; 1909–2000), of English ancestry, and Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo (1911–1976), of Bolivian descent. Her father, an aeronautical engineer, emigrated from La Paz, Bolivia at age 17; her mother was American, the daughter of architect Emery Stanford Hall and wife Clara Louise Adams.
As a young girl, she wanted to be a performer. Her first love and ambition was ballet, which she studied from ages seven to seventeen. She gave up ballet after her instructor told her that she did not have the proper body. While a student at La Jolla High School in 1958, she won the Fairest of the Fair beauty pageant at the San Diego County Fair.
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Raul Esparza
Raúl Eduardo Esparza (born October 24, 1970) is an American stage actor, singer, and voice artist noted for his award winning performances in Broadway shows. He has received Tony nominations for his role as a vibrant and flamboyant Philip Salon in the Boy George musical Taboo in 2004; Robert, an empty man devoid of connection in the musical comedy Company in 2006; a lazy and snarky man in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming; and an aggressive volatile movie producer in David Mamet's Speed the Plow. He played the role of Riff Raff on Broadway in the revival of "The Rocky Horror Show" and the role of Caractacus Potts in the Broadway musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
He has been nominated in all Tony categories for which an actor is eligible but has yet to win. He has performed musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Boy George and the Sherman Brothers and has performed in plays by David Mamet, Harold Pinter, William Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, and more. He is widely regarded for his versatility on stage. His work on film includes Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty and Wes Craven's My Soul To Take. His television credits include roles on "Medium" and Pushing Daisies. He has recorded the audiobook for Stephen King's Under the Dome and sings in concerts all over the country.
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Richard Benjamin
Richard Benjamin (born May 22, 1938) is an American actor and film director. He has starred in a number of productions, including Goodbye, Columbus (1969), based on the novella by Philip Roth, and Westworld (1973), and directed, among other films, the 1982 film My Favorite Year.
Benjamin was born in New York City, New York, the son of a garment industry worker. He attended the High School of Performing Arts and graduated from Northwestern University, where he was involved in many plays and studied in the Northwestern theater school.
He married actress Paula Prentiss on October 26, 1961; and they have two children. They appeared together in the short-lived television series He & She (1967–68) and the film Catch-22 (1970). In 1978, he starred in the ambitious, but short-lived, television series Quark.
Benjamin starred in Goodbye, Columbus (1969), based on the novella by Philip Roth. After appearing with a star-studded cast in the Mike Nichols film (1970) version of another best-seller, Catch-22, he starred in Diary of a Mad Housewife, The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker, and yet another film based on a famous Roth novel, Portnoy's Complaint (1972), in the title role.
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Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 – December 31, 1979) was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant impact on popular music down to the present day, and have an enduring broad appeal.
Rodgers was the first person to win what are considered the top show business awards in television, recording, movies and Broadway—an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony—now known collectively as an EGOT. He has also won a Pulitzer Prize, making him one of two people (Marvin Hamlisch is the other) to receive each award.
Born into a prosperous ethnic German Jewish family in Arverne, Queens, New York City, Rodgers was the son of Mamie Levy and Dr. William Abrahams Rodgers, a prominent physician who had changed the family name from Abrahams. Richard began playing the piano at age six. He attended P.S. 10, Townsend Harris Hall and DeWitt Clinton High School. Rodgers spent his early teenage summers in Camp Wigwam (Waterford, Maine) where he composed some of his first songs.
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Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur (born March 1, 1921) is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989.
Wilbur was born in New York City and grew up in North Caldwell, New Jersey. He graduated from Montclair High School in 1938, having worked on the school newspaper as a student there. He graduated from Amherst College in 1942 and then served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1945 during World War II. After the Army and graduate school at Harvard University, Wilbur taught at Wesleyan University for two decades and at Smith College for another decade. At Wesleyan, he was instrumental in founding the award-winning poetry series of the University Press. He received two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and, as of 2011, teaches at Amherst College. He is also on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College. He married Charlotte Hayes Ward in 1942 after his graduation from Amherst; she was a student at nearby Smith College.
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Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner (March 6, 1885 – September 25, 1933) was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.
Born in Niles, Michigan, Ring Lardner was the son of wealthy parents Henry and Lena Phillips Lardner. He was the youngest of nine children. Lardner's name came from a cousin of the same name. The cousin, in turn had been named by Lardner's uncle, Rear Admiral James L. Lardner, who had decided to name his son after a friend, Rear Admiral Cadwalader Ringgold, who was from a distinguished military family. Lardner never liked his given name and shortened it, naming one of his sons Ring Jr.
Lardner was married to Ellis Abbott of Goshen, Indiana in 1911. They had four sons, John, James, Ring Jr., and David. John was a newspaperman, sports columnist and magazine writer. James, also a newspaperman, was killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting with the International Brigades. Ring Lardner, Jr. was a screenwriter who was blacklisted after the Second World War as one of the Hollywood Ten, screenwriters who were incarcerated for contempt of Congress after refusing to answer questions posed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He won two Academy Awards for his screenplays—one before his imprisonment and blacklisting (for Woman of the Year in 1942), and one after (for M*A*S*H in 1970). His book, The Lardners, My Family Remembered (ISBN 0-06-012517-9), is a reliable source of Lardner information. David worked for The New Yorker as a general reporter and war correspondent before he was killed by a landmine near Aachen, Germany in October 1944, less than one month after his arrival to the European Theater of war. Lardner was a grand uncle to 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner George Lardner, Jr., a journalist at The Washington Post since 1963.
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Risë Stevens
Risë Stevens ( /ˈriːsə/; born June 11, 1913, New York City) is a retired American operatic mezzo-soprano.
Born Risë Steenberg to Christian and Sarah (née Mechanic) Steenberg, known as "Sadie". Her father was of Norwegian Lutheran descent and her mother was Jewish, of Polish and Russian descent. She had a younger brother, Lewis "Bud" Steenberg. She studied at New York's Juilliard School for three years. She went to Vienna, where she was trained by Marie Gutheil-Schoder and Herbert Graf. She made her début as Mignon in Prague in 1936 and stayed there until 1938, also appearing in guest appearances at the Vienna State Opera.
She was engaged at the Teatro Colón in 1938 (as Octavian) and was invited to the Glyndebourne Festival in 1939 where she was heard as Dorabella and Cherubino. In 1938 she made her début at the Metropolitan Opera as Mignon. Three days later, she sang Octavian opposite Lotte Lehmann. The film industry in Hollywood produced several films for her, including The Chocolate Soldier (1941) with Nelson Eddy and Going My Way (1944) with Bing Crosby, the latter film crediting Stevens as a contralto.
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Rita Moreno
Rita Moreno (born December 11, 1931) is a Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress. She is the only Hispanic and one of the few performers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, and was the second Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award.
Moreno was born Rosa Dolores Alverío in Humacao, Puerto Rico, to Rosa María, a seamstress, and Paco Alverío, a farmer. She moved with her mother to New York City at the age of five, and took the surname of her stepfather, Edward Moreno.
She began her first dancing lessons soon after arriving in New York from a friend of her mother, a Spanish dancer called Paco Cansino, who was the uncle of Rita Hayworth. When she was 11 years old, she lent her voice to Spanish language versions of American films.
She had her first Broadway role — as "Angelina" in Skydrift — by the time she was 13, which caught the attention of Hollywood talent scouts. She appeared in small roles in The Toast of New Orleans and Singin' in the Rain, in which she played Zelda Zanners.
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Rob Reiner
Robert "Rob" Reiner (born March 6, 1947) is an American actor, director, producer, writer, and political activist.
As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence as Michael "Meathead" Stivic, son-in-law of Archie and Edith Bunker (played by Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton), on All in the Family. That role earned him two Emmy Awards during the 1970s. As a director, Reiner was recognized by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) with nominations for Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally..., and A Few Good Men. He also directed Misery. He studied at the UCLA Film School.
Reiner was born to a Jewish family in The Bronx, New York, and is the son of Estelle Reiner (née Lebost), an actress, and Carl Reiner, a comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. As a child, Reiner lived in New Rochelle, New York, where his family lived at 48 Bonnie Meadow Road. This is similar to 148 Bonnie Meadow Road, the fictional address of the Petries on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the 1960s CBS sitcom created by his father. Also, his latest film Flipped takes place at the corner of Bonnie Meadow Lane and Renfrew Street.
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Robert Lopez
Robert Lopez (born February 23, 1975) is an American composer and lyricist of musicals, best known for co-creating The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, receiving Tony Awards for both works.
A native of the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, Robert Lopez became interested in songwriting from an early age (he wrote his first song at 7.) He attended Hunter College High School and received a B.A. in English from Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Spizzwinks(?).
In 1998, while participating in the prestigious BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, he met another aspiring songwriter, Jeff Marx. Their first project together, Kermit, Prince of Denmark, a Muppet parody of Hamlet, won the Kleban Award for lyrics, though The Jim Henson Company rejected the script, saying it did not have enough "kid appeal." The story was considered for the next Muppet film by Chris Curtin in 2004, until Chris left the Disney Company. Highlights from the unproduced musical were performed by Rick Lyon, Rebecca Jones, and Susan Blackwell at the BMI Workshop.
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Robert Schenkkan
Robert Frederic Schenkkan, Jr. (born 19 March 1953) is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor, perhaps most recognizable as the character of Lieutenant Commander Dexter Remmick in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992 for his work The Kentucky Cycle.
Schenkkan was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Jean McKenzie and Robert Frederic Schenkkan, a public television executive. He grew up in Austin, Texas. As a Plan II Honors student he received a B.A.in Drama, magna cum laude from the University of Texas, Austin (Phi Beta Kappa and Friars' Society), and an M.F.A. in Theatre Arts from Cornell University. For many years, he lived in New York City and then Los Angeles, California, working both as a writer and an actor in film, television, and theatre. Since 1990 he has focused exclusively on his writing.
Schenkkan is the author of ten full-length plays. By the Waters of Babylon premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in February, 2005. The play is unrelated to the Stephen Vincent Benét short story By the Waters of Babylon or its subsequent adaptation. Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in December 2005. The Marriage of Miss Hollywood and King Neptune premiered at the University of Texas at Austin in November 2005. And The Devil and Daniel Webster premiered at the Seattle Children’s Theatre in February 2006.
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Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992) was an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs. His most recognized tunes included the chart-topping country/pop hits "King of the Road", "Dang Me" and "England Swings", all from the mid-1960s Nashville sound era.
After growing up in Oklahoma and serving in the United States Army, Miller began his musical career as a songwriter in the late 1950s, penning such hits as "Billy Bayou" and "Home" for Jim Reeves and "Invitation to the Blues" for Ray Price. He later started a recording career and reached the peak of his fame in the late-1960s, but continued to record and tour into the 1990s, charting his final top 20 country hit "Old Friends" with Willie Nelson in 1982. Later in his life, he wrote the music and lyrics for the 1985 Tony-award winning Broadway musical Big River, in which he also acted.
Miller died from lung cancer in 1992, and was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame three years later. His songs continued to be recorded by younger artists, with covers of "Tall, Tall Trees" by Alan Jackson and "Husbands and Wives" by Brooks & Dunn, each reaching the number one spot on country charts in the 1990s. The Roger Miller Museum in his home town serves as a tribute to Miller.
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Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the "King of Country Music," Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.
Acuff began his music career in the 1930s, and gained regional fame as the singer and fiddler for his group, the Smoky Mountain Boys. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1938, and although his popularity as a musician waned in the late 1940s, he remained one of the Opry's key figures and promoters for nearly four decades. In 1942, Acuff co-founded the first major Nashville-based country music publishing company—Acuff-Rose Music—which signed acts such as Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and The Everly Brothers. In 1962, Acuff became the first living inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Roy Acuff was born in Maynardville, Tennessee to Ida (née Carr) and Simon E. Neill Acuff, the third of five children. The Acuffs were a fairly prominent Union County family. Roy's paternal grandfather, Coram Acuff, had been a Tennessee state senator, and Roy's maternal grandfather was a local physician. Roy's father was an accomplished fiddler and a Baptist preacher, his mother was proficient on the piano, and during Roy's early years the Acuff house was a popular place for local gatherings. At such gatherings, Roy would often amuse people by balancing farm tools on his chin. He also learned to play harmonica and jaw harp at a young age.
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Rupert Holmes
Rupert Holmes (born February 24, 1947) is an English-born American composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" (1979/1980) and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980. He is also known for his 1985 Tony Award-winning musical Drood (originally The Mystery of Edwin Drood) and his 2007 Drama Desk Award-winning book for the Broadway musical Curtains, and for his television series Remember WENN.
Holmes was born David Goldstein in Northwich, Cheshire, England. His father, Leonard Goldstein, was a United States Army Warrant Officer and bandleader, his mother, Gwen, was English, and both were musical. Holmes has dual American and British citizenship. The family moved when Holmes was six years old to the northern New York City suburb of Nanuet, New York, where Holmes grew up and attended nearby Nyack High School and then the Manhattan School of Music (majoring in clarinet). Holmes' brother, Richard, is an opera singer based in New York City and is the principal lyric baritone of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, sings roles with regional opera companies, such as Glimmerglass Opera, Lake George, and Virginia Opera, among others, and has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera.
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Sam Mendes
Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film American Beauty (1999) and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1996) and Gypsy (2003). He is currently working on Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond film. He has a child with his former wife Kate Winslet.
Mendes was born in Reading, Berkshire, the only child of Valerie Helene (née Barnett), an author of children's books, and Jameson Peter Mendes, a university professor. His father is from Trinidad of ethnic Portuguese descent, and his mother an English Jew. His grandfather is the Trinidadian writer Alfred Mendes.
Mendes' parents divorced when he was a child. He grew up in Oxfordshire and attended Magdalen College School and Peterhouse, Cambridge where he graduated with a first in English. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Marlowe Society and directed several plays, including a critically acclaimed production of Cyrano de Bergerac with Tom Hollander and Nick Clegg amongst the cast members.
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Scott Wittman
Scott Wittman (born 1955) is an American director, lyricist, and writer for Broadway, concerts, and television.
Wittman was raised in Nanuet, New York, graduated high Nanuet Senior High School in 1972 and attended Emerson College in Boston for two years before leaving to pursue a career in musical theatre in New York City. While directing a show for a Greenwich Village club he met Marc Shaiman, and the two became collaborators and life partners. While Shaiman wrote for television shows, including Saturday Night Live, Wittman directed concerts for such artists as Bette Midler, Christine Ebersole, Raquel Welch, Dame Edna Everage, and Lypsinka, among others.
In 2002, Shaiman and Wittman collaborated on Hairspray, which won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics, the Tony Award for Best Original Score, and a Grammy Award. In addition to Hairspray, Wittman conceived, wrote lyrics for, and directed Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me and conceived and directed Matters of the Heart, a solo concert by Patti LuPone.
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Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930) is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award).
Connery is best known for portraying the character James Bond, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983 (six Eon Productions films and the non-canonical Thunderball remake, Never Say Never Again). In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His film career also includes such films as Marnie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Murder on the Orient Express, Dragonheart, and The Rock. He was knighted in July 2000. Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine and in 1999, at age 69, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century".
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Sheila Hancock
Sheila Cameron Hancock, CBE (born 22 February 1933) is an English actress and author.
Sheila Hancock was born in Blackgang on the Isle of Wight, the daughter of Ivy Louise (née Woodward) and Enrico Cameron Hancock, who was a publican. Her sister Billie is nine years older (and worked as a variety artist until retiring to Antibes in 2003 at the age of 79). After wartime evacuation, Hancock attended Dartford County Grammar School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
She worked in repertory during the 1950s and made her West End debut in 1958, replacing Joan Sims in the play Breath of Spring. She then appeared in Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop production of Make Me An Offer in 1959, and her other early West End appearances included the revue One Over the Eight with Kenneth Williams in 1961, and starring in Rattle of a Simple Man in 1962. In 1965, she made her Broadway debut in Entertaining Mr Sloane. In 1978, she played Miss Hannigan in the original London cast of the musical Annie and two years later, she played Mrs Lovett in the original London production of the musical Sweeney Todd.
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Sheldon Harnick
Sheldon Harnick (born April 30, 1924) is an American lyricist best known for his collaborations with composer Jerry Bock on hit musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof.
Harnick began his career writing words and music to comic songs in musical revues. One of these, "The Merry Minuet", was popularized by the Kingston Trio. It is in the caustic style usually associated with Tom Lehrer and is sometimes incorrectly attributed to him.
Harnick began writing music while still in Carl Schurz High School. After his Army service, he graduated from the Northwestern University School of Music (1946-1949) with a Bachelor of Music Degree, and worked with various orchestras in the Chicago area. He then moved to New York City and wrote for many musicals and revues.
Around 1956, Harnick met Jerry Bock, forming "what is arguably the most important musical partnership of the '60s." Their first musical was The Body Beautiful, running for only 60 performances in 1958, but Fiorello! (1959) ran for 795 performances and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Fiddler on the Roof (1964) "became one of the most cherished of all Broadway musicals."
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Sherman Brothers
The Sherman Brothers were an American songwriting duo that specialized in musical films, made up of Robert B. Sherman (December 19, 1925 – March 6, 2012) and Richard M. Sherman (born June 12, 1928).
The Sherman Brothers wrote more motion-picture musical song scores than any other songwriting team in film history. Film scores of the Sherman Brothers include Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Jungle Book, Charlotte's Web and The Aristocats.
Sons of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Robert and Richard Sherman began writing songs together in 1951 on a challenge from their father, Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman. The brothers wrote together and with different songwriting partners throughout the rest of the decade.
In 1958, Robert founded the music publishing company Music World Corporation, which later enjoyed a landmark relationship with Disney's BMI-affiliated publishing arm, Wonderland Music Company. That same year, the Sherman Brothers had their first top-ten hit with "Tall Paul," sung by Mouseketeer Judy Harriet on the Surf Records label and then covered by Mouseketeer Annette Funicello. The success of this song yielded the attention of Walt Disney, who eventually hired the Sherman Brothers as Staff Songwriters for Walt Disney Studios. The first song they wrote on personal assignment by Walt Disney was "Strummin' Song" in 1961. It was used in the Annette Funicello made-for-television movie called The Horsemasters.
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Shirley Temple
Shirley Jane Temple (born April 23, 1928), later Shirley Temple Black, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. She began her film career in 1932 at the age of three, and in 1934, found international fame in Bright Eyes, a feature film designed specifically for her talents. She received a special Juvenile Academy Award in February 1935, and film hits such as Curly Top and Heidi followed year after year during the mid-to-late 1930s. Licensed merchandise that capitalized on her wholesome image included dolls, dishes, and clothing. Her box office popularity waned as she reached adolescence, and she left the film industry at the age of 12 to attend high school[clarification needed]. She appeared in a few films of varying quality in her mid-to-late teens, and retired completely from films in 1950 at the age of 22. She was the top box-office draw four years in a row (1935–38) in a Motion Picture Herald poll.
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Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE ( /ˈpwɑːtjeɪ/ or /ˈpwɑːti.eɪ/; born February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.
In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field. The significance of this achievement was later bolstered in 1967 when he starred in three well-received films To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box office star of that year. In all three films, issues revolve around the race of the characters Poitier portrays. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking 22nd on the list of 25.
Poitier has directed a number of popular movies such as A Piece of the Action; Uptown Saturday Night, and Let's Do It Again (with friend Bill Cosby), and Stir Crazy (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder). In 2002, 38 years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Award, designated "To Sidney Poitier in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being." Since 1997 he has been the Bahamian ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Sidney Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America's highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama.
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Stephen Flaherty
Stephen Flaherty (born September 18, 1960) is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Once on This Island, which was nominated for eight Tony Awards, Seussical , which was nominated for the Grammy Award and Ragtime, which was nominated for twelve Tony Awards and won Best Original Score. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards with Lynn Ahrens for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
Flaherty was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began studying piano at the age of seven. When he was twelve he knew he wanted to write musicals and by age fourteen he had already composed his first musical score. He attended South Hills Catholic High School in Pittsburgh and later studied musical composition and piano at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1982. He did additional graduate studies in Musical Theater at New York University.
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Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.
After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.
He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.
As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.
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Stephen Keeling
Stephen Keeling is a British composer and musician who works predominantly in musical theatre.
Born in 1966 in Staffordshire, England, he trained at Goldsmith's College, University of London, gaining an honours degree in music. In 1990 he was chosen by Sir Cameron Mackintosh to be one of 12 writers to study with Stephen Sondheim during the latter's year-long tenure at Oxford University as the Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre.
During his time with Stephen Sondheim at Oxford, he composed the music for Maddie (book and lyrics by Shaun McKenna and Steven Dexter), which was subsequently workshopped at the Royal National Theatre Studio before receiving its first full production at the Salisbury Playhouse. The production then transferred to the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue in London's West End in 1997, produced by Kenny Wax Productions.
He was the co-composer, along with Laurence O'Keefe, for La Cava (book by Dana Broccoli, lyrics by John Claflin), which transferred from the Churchill Theatre, Bromley to the Victoria Palace Theatre, London in 2000 and then later transferred to the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End of London.
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Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim ( /ˈsɒnd.haɪm/) (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous works include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.
Sondheim has also written material for movies, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.
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Steven Reineke
Steven Reineke (born September 14, 1970) is a conductor, composer, and arranger from Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the Music Director of The New York Pops. He currently resides in New York City.
Reineke was born in 1970 in Tipp City, Ohio and developed an interest in his musical talents at an early age on the trumpet. At age fifteen, he taught himself how to play the piano. He continued his trumpet studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, receiving two bachelors of music degrees with honors in both trumpet performance and music composition.
Steven Reineke started his tenure as Music Director of The New York Pops in the 2009-2010 season. Mr. Reineke conducts the orchestra’s annual concert series at Carnegie Hall as well as tours, recordings, and nationwide telecasts, including the Macy’s 4 July Fireworks Spectacular on NBC Television. New York’s only permanent and professional symphonic pops orchestra, The New York Pops is the largest independent pops orchestra in the United States.
Reineke was appointed Principal Pops Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra and began his first season in 2011/12. He also serves as Principal Pops Conductor of the Long Beach and Modesto Symphony Orchestras. Previously, he was Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, where for fifteen years he served as a composer, arranger and conducting protégé of the late celebrated pops conductor Erich Kunzel.
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Steven Sater
Steven Sater is an American poet, playwright, lyricist, television writer, and screenwriter.
Born in Evansville, Indiana, Sater attended Washington University in St. Louis as an undergraduate. Due to an apartment fire Sater was forced to jump from his balcony and damaged his spine, as well as several other limbs. The months spent recovering from his injuries and burns inspired Sater to teach himself Ancient Greek and seriously pursue the arts, and he went on to study English literature at Princeton University. [1]
After completing his graduate program, Sater took a position with a New York literary agent, but continued to write plays on the side. It was during this time that he joined the Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist organization. His membership has proved important to his life beyond spirituality, as it brought Sater together with both his future wife, and his future creative partner, Duncan Sheik.[2]
Soon after meeting, Sater collaborated with Sheik on his play Umbrage, with Sheik providing the music for Sater's lyrics. To produce Sheik's third studio album Phantom Moon, Sater gave Sheik lyrics and Sheik set them musically, cooperatively producing the album. They returned to stage to produce Nero at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, California, with book and lyrics by Sater and music by Sheik. The project remains in active development, most recently workshopped with New York Stage and Film at the Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College in July 2008, starring Idina Menzel, Lea Michele, and Michael Arden, under the direction of Daniel Kramer.[3]
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Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris (born May 13, 1950 as Stevland Hardaway Judkins), known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century. Blind since shortly after birth, Wonder signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day.
Among Wonder's best known works are singles such as "Superstition", "Sir Duke", "I Wish" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You". Well known albums also include Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist. Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with Wonder at number five.
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Stew (musician)
Mark Stewart (born 1961), known by his stage name Stew, is a singer/songwriter/playwright from Los Angeles. In the early 1990s, he formed a band called The Negro Problem and later went on to release albums under his own name. His 2000 release Guest Host was named Album of the Year by Entertainment Weekly and his 2002 album, The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs, repeated that feat. He toured in support of Love's Arthur Lee in 2002 and in 2003 he was invited to take part in the Lincoln Center's American Songbook series of concerts.
Starting in 2004, he began writing the book, lyrics and music (with Heidi Rodewald) for his semi-autobiographical rock musical Passing Strange, produced with the support of the Sundance Institute and The Public Theater, which won him the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics. In 2005, he wrote and performed "Gary's Song" for the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Have You Seen This Snail? (Where's Gary?)". In 2006, he and Rodewald continued to produce Passing Strange as well as working on a film project with The Sundance Institute. Passing Strange had successful runs at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California, in the fall of 2006, and off-Broadway at The Public Theatre in New York City during the spring of 2007. It received critical praise from both the New York Times and Variety and opened on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre in February 2008 under the aegis of producer Liz McCann and the Shubert Organization. The play garnered seven Tony nominations in 2008, with Stew receiving four nominations and winning the award for Best Book. The play closed in July 2008, with Spike Lee filming the final performances for a feature film which screened at the Sundance Festival in January 2009.
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Stuart Ostrow
Stuart Ostrow (born circa 1932) is an American theatrical producer and director, professor, and author.
Born in New York City, Ostrow began his career as an apprentice of Frank Loesser and eventually became Vice-President and General Manager of Frank Music Corporation and Frank Productions, Incorporated, the co-producers of the Broadway productions The Most Happy Fella, The Music Man, Greenwillow, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Ostrow's first solo project was as producer and director of Meredith Willson's Here's Love, the 1963 musical stage adaptation of the classic film Miracle on 34th Street. Subsequent producing credits include The Apple Tree, 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, and La Bête, which won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy.
In 1973, Ostrow established the Stuart Ostrow Foundation’s Musical Theatre Lab, a non-profit, professional workshop for original musical theatre, the first of its kind. Since its inception, the MTLab has presented thirty-two experimental new works, including The Robber Bridegroom by Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman, Really Rosie by Maurice Sendak and Carole King, and Up From Paradise by Arthur Miller and Stanley Silverman.
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Sutton Foster
Sutton Lenore Foster (born March 18, 1975) is an American actress, singer, and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. Her other Broadway credits include Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein and Shrek the Musical. She also is starring in the upcoming television series Bunheads.
Foster was born in Statesboro, Georgia and raised in Troy, Michigan. At age fifteen, she was a contestant on the television show Star Search and also auditioned for the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club. She left Troy High School before graduating (she received her diploma via correspondence courses) to join the national tour of The Will Rogers Follies directed by Tommy Tune. She then attended Carnegie Mellon University for one year, but left to pursue a theatrical career full-time. May 2012, she received an honorary doctorate from Ball State University. Her brother is actor Hunter Foster.
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T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century." Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.
The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915—is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement, and was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
Eliot was born into the Eliot family, a middle class family originally from New England, who had moved to St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843–1919), was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Louis. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843–1929), wrote poetry and was a social worker, a new profession in the early twentieth century. Eliot was the last of six surviving children; his parents were both 44 years old when he was born. His four sisters were between eleven and nineteen years older; his brother was eight years older. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather Thomas Stearns.
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Terrence McNally
Terrence McNally (born November 3, 1939) is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He has been a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild since 1970 and has served as vice-president since 1981. McNally was partnered to Thomas Kirdahy following a civil union ceremony in Vermont in 2003, and they subsequently married in Washington, D.C. on April 6, 2010.
Born in St. Petersburg, Florida and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, McNally moved to New York City in 1956 to attend Columbia University, where he majored in English and wrote Columbia's annual Varsity Show, graduating in 1960, the same year in which he gained membership into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He worked briefly for the alumni magazine Columbia College Today.
After graduation, McNally moved to Mexico to focus on his writing, completing a one-act play which he submitted to the Actors Studio in New York for production. While the play was turned down by the acting school, the Studio was impressed with the script, and McNally was invited to serve as the Studio's stage manager so that he could gain practical knowledge of theater. In his early years in New York, he was a protégé and lover of the noted playwright Edward Albee.
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The New York Pops
The New York Pops is the largest independent symphonic pops orchestra in the United States, and the only symphonic orchestra in New York City specializing in popular American music. Led by newly appointed Music Director Steven Reineke, the orchestra performs an annual subscription series and birthday gala at Carnegie Hall, enjoying one of the highest subscription renewal rates of any series at Carnegie Hall. The New York Pops was founded by former NBC Music Director Skitch Henderson in 1983 with a mission to create greater public awareness and appreciation of America's rich musical heritage.
Along with performing at Carnegie Hall, The New York Pops tours throughout the world and gives free concerts in New York City parks through its Summermusic program. In 2009 the orchestra made its fifth annual appearance in the Macy’s 4 July Fireworks Spectacular on NBC. Past media projects include producing a nationally syndicated radio series and performing on PBS. The orchestra’s extensive discography includes recordings of popular song, film and theater music, and music for the holidays.
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Tim Burton
Timothy Walter "Tim" Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Dark Shadows and for blockbusters such as Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland, which was the second highest-grossing film of 2010, and the tenth highest-grossing film of all time.
Burton is known for using recurring collaborators on his works; among them are Johnny Depp, who has become a close friend of Burton since their first film together; musician Danny Elfman, who has composed for all but five of the films Burton has directed or produced; and domestic partner Helena Bonham Carter. He also wrote and illustrated the poetry book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, published in 1997, and a compilation of his drawings, entitled The Art of Tim Burton, was released in 2009. Burton has directed 16 films and produced 12, as of 2012. His latest films are an adaptation of the soap opera Dark Shadows, released on May 10, 2012, and a remake of his 1984 short, Frankenweenie, scheduled to be released on October 5, 2012.
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Tom Aldredge
Thomas Ernest "Tom" Aldredge (February 28, 1928 – July 22, 2011) was an American television, film and stage actor.
Aldredge was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Lucienne Juliet (née Marcillat) and William Joseph Aldredge, a colonel in the United States Army Air Corps. He originally planned to become a lawyer and was a Pre-Law student at the University of Dayton in the late 1940s. In 1947 he decided to pursue a career as an actor after attending a performance of the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Aldredge carved out a respected career on the Broadway stage that spanned five decades. He made his Broadway debut as Danny in the 1959 musical The Nervous Set. In 1972 he won a Drama Desk Award for his portrayal of Ozzie, the father of a blinded Vietnam veteran, in David Rabe's Sticks and Bones. He played Henry VIII's fool, Will Sommers in Richard Rodgers' pentultimate musical, Rex in 1976. He originated the role of Norman Thayer Jr. in On Golden Pond in 1978, earning the first of three Tony Award nominations. His best known role however was that of the Narrator/Mysterious Man in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into The Woods, a role he later repeated in the PBS Great Performances production. He also created the role of the doctor in another Sondhiem/Lapine collaboration, Passion.
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Tom Kitt
Tom Kitt (born 11 July 1952) is a former Irish Fianna Fáil politician. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South constituency from 1987 to 2011. He also served as Government Chief Whip from 2004–08.
Tom Kitt was born in Galway and educated at St. Jarlath's College, Tuam and St Patrick's College of Education, Dublin. Kitt worked as a primary school teacher before becoming involved in local politics as a member of Dublin City Council in 1979.
As well as being involved in politics, Kitt has run several marathons. He completed the Dublin city marathon on five occasions as well as the Berlin Marathon (1991), the Belfast Marathon (1996) and the 100th Boston Marathon in 1996.
Kitt comes from a family with a strong political background. He is a son of Michael F. Kitt, who was a TD for various Galway constituencies (1948–1951 and 1957–1975), and a brother of Michael P. Kitt, currently a TD for Galway East. His sister, Áine Brady is a current Minister of State and his brother in law Gerry Brady is a former T.D for Kildare. Tom Kitt's sons David, Thomas and Robbie are musicians.
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Tom Whitlock
Thomas Ross "Tom" Whitlock (born 1954) is a songwriter and lyricist best known for his Academy Award and Golden Globe winning song "Take My Breath Away" from the film Top Gun, which he co-wrote with Giorgio Moroder.
Whitlock was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri. As a drummer, he played in many bands and on many recording sessions. In 1977, he was signed to his first recording contract with Mercury Records. In 1983, Mr. Whitlock became a recording engineer in Los Angeles, focusing primarily on film scores and songs for movies such as Scarface, Beverly Hills Cop and II, as well as many others.
With Giorgio Moroder, he co-wrote five songs on the Top Gun soundtrack, including "Take My Breath Away" and the Kenny Loggins hit "Danger Zone". Whitlock was Moroder's mechanic, fixing his Ferraris, before turning into a lyricist. ASCAP shows 113 songs registered, performed by artists such as Berlin, Bonnie Tyler, Jennifer Rush, Michael McDonald, Ray Charles, Graham Nash, Diana Ross, Teddy Pendergrass, Roger Daltrey and John Entwhistle.
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Tom Wopat
Tom Wopat (born September 9, 1951) is an American actor and singer. He first achieved fame as Luke Duke in the long-running 1979 television series The Dukes of Hazzard, along with John Schneider. He also played Jeff, one of Cybill Shepherd's ex-husbands in the TV series Cybill.
Wopat was born in Lodi, Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and made his television debut in the daytime drama One Life to Live; however, he achieved television fame in the popular long-running television series The Dukes of Hazzard (1979–1985).
He also embarked on a music career. He has recorded eight albums. Musically he switches between rock and roll and country music styles, though his last two albums have been of classic pop standards. The latter recording, Dissertation on the State of Bliss, is a collection of Harold Arlen songs.
Wopat first appeared on the Broadway stage as a replacement in the 1977 musical I Love My Wife, as "Wally". He then appeared as a replacement in the stage musicals City of Angels, and Guys and Dolls. He finally appeared in the opening cast of the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun opposite Bernadette Peters, Susan Lucci and Reba McEntire, who played Annie Oakley (in consecutive order). He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1999 for his performance as "Frank Butler". He has since appeared in the revivals of the musicals Chicago and 42nd Street.
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Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film Munich.
Kushner was born in Manhattan, New York to Jewish clarinetist and conductor William Kushner and bassoonist Sylvia Deutscher. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana, the seat of Calcasieu Parish where he spent his childhood. During high school Kushner had a reputation in policy debate, at one point going to a camp, and making it to the final rounds. Kushner moved to New York in 1974 to begin his undergraduate college education at Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Medieval Studies in 1978. He attended New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1984. During graduate school, he spent the summers of 1978-1981 directing both early original works (Masque of Owls and Incidents and Occurrences During the Travels of the Tailor Max) and plays by Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest) for the children attending the Governor's Program for Gifted Children (GPGC) in Lake Charles.
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Vanessa L. Williams
Vanessa Lynn Williams (born March 18, 1963) is an American pop-R&B recording artist, producer, dancer, model and actress. In 1983, she became the first woman of African-American descent to be crowned Miss America, but a scandal arose when Penthouse magazine bought and published nude photographs of her. She relinquished her title early and was succeeded by the first runner-up, Suzette Charles of New Jersey – who was also African-American. Williams rebounded by launching a career as an entertainer, earning multiple Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award nominations.
Williams released her debut album The Right Stuff in 1988, which spawned the hits "The Right Stuff", a #1 on Hot Dance Songs, and "Dreamin'" a #1 on R&B and #8 on Billboard Hot 100. Her second studio album The Comfort Zone in 1991 topped the Billboard R&B Album Chart, which spawned the Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit "Save the Best for Last". In 1994 she debuted on Broadway in the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman. In 1995 she recorded "Colors of the Wind", the Oscar-winner for Best Original Song from the Disney animated feature film Pocahontas, which reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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Victor Borge
Victor Borge ( /ˈbɔrɡə/ BOR-gə; 3 January 1909 – 23 December 2000), born Børge Rosenbaum, was a Danish and American comedian, conductor and pianist, affectionately known as The Clown Prince of Denmark,The Unmelancholy Dane, and The Great Dane.
Borge was born Børge Rosenbaum in Copenhagen, Denmark, into a Jewish family. His parents, Bernhard and Frederikke Rosenbaum, were both musicians—his father a violist in the Royal Danish Orchestra and his mother a pianist. Like his mother, Borge began piano lessons at the age of two, and it was soon apparent that he was a prodigy. He gave his first piano recital when he was eight years old, and in 1918 was awarded a full scholarship at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, studying under Olivo Krause. Later on, he was taught by Victor Schiøler, Liszt's student Frederic Lamond, and Busoni's pupil Egon Petri.
Borge played his first major concert in 1926 at the Danish concert-hall Odd Fellow Palæet (The Odd Fellow's Lodge building). After a few years as a classical concert pianist, he started his now famous "stand up" act, with the signature blend of piano music and jokes. He married American Elsie Chilton in 1933, the same year he debuted with his revue acts. Borge started touring extensively in Europe, where he began telling anti-Nazi jokes.
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Victor Garber
Victor Joseph Garber (born March 16, 1949) is a Canadian film, stage and television actor and singer. Garber is known for playing Jesus in Godspell, Anthony in Sweeney Todd, John Wilkes Booth in Assassins, Jack Bristow in the television series Alias, Max in Lend Me a Tenor, and Thomas Andrews in James Cameron's Titanic.
Born in London, Ontario, Canada, Garber is of Russian Jewish descent; his parents were Joe Garber (died 1995) and wife, Hope Wolf (an actress, singer, and the host of At Home with Hope Garber). He has a brother, Nathan, and a sister, Alisa.
When Garber was 12 he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. He attended Ryerson Elementary School. He also was enrolled in the children's program of the Grand Theatre, and at age 16 he was accepted at a six-week summer theatre training program at the University of Toronto taught by Robert Gill.
Garber began acting at the age of nine, and studied at the University of Toronto's Hart House at age 16. In 1967, after a period working as a folk singer, he formed a folk band called The Sugar Shoppe with Peter Mann, Laurie Hood and Lee Harris. The group enjoyed moderate success, even performing on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson before breaking up. He has worked in various American and Canadian films and television, including James Cameron's Titanic (1997), in which he used a Northern Irish accent to play the shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, and CTV's E.N.G. (1991–1993), on which he had a recurring guest role.
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Victoria Clark
Victoria Clark (born October 10, 1959) is an American musical theatre singer and actress. Clark has performed in many Broadway musicals and in other theatre, film and television work, and her soprano voice can be heard on numerous cast albums and several animated films. In 2008 she released her first solo album.
Clark won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 2005 for her performance in the musical The Light in the Piazza. She also won the Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Joseph Jefferson Award for her performances in this role.
Clark was born and raised in Texas, the daughter of Lorraine and Jim Clark. She studied the piano and attended the Hockaday School, an all-girls school in Dallas. She also attended the Interlochen Arts Academy before going to Yale University, graduating in 1982. At Yale, at the age of eighteen, she sang the role of Mabel in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. She also sang the title role in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience and directed a production of Ruddigore for the Yale Gilbert & Sullivan Society. After college, Clark studied at New York University’s Musical Theatre Master’s Program as a stage director and began to direct operas and musicals professionally. Although she continues to direct, she has primarily focused on singing and acting.
wn.com/Victoria_Clark -
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty ( /ˈbeɪti/ BAY-tee; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including winning the Best Director Award and its highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. He has been nominated for 16 Golden Globe Awards and won six, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he received in 2007. Only Beatty and Orson Welles have been nominated for producer, director, writer and actor in the same film. Welles did it once (for Citizen Kane), Beatty did it twice (for Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Nova Scotia-born teacher, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a Ph.D. of educational psychology, a public school administrator, and dealt in real estate. Beatty's grandparents were also educators. The family was Baptist. In 1945, the family moved from Richmond to Arlington, Virginia. Beatty's sister is the multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine.
wn.com/Warren_Beatty -
Wendy Wasserstein
Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 – January 30, 2006) was an American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles.
Wasserstein was born in the Brooklyn section of New York City to Morris Wasserstein, a wealthy textile executive, and his wife, Lola (née Liska) Schleifer, an amateur dancer who moved to the United States from Poland when her father was accused of being a spy. Lola Wasserstein reportedly inspired some of her daughter's characters. Wendy was one of five siblings, including brother Bruce Wasserstein, a well-known investment banker. Her maternal grandfather was Simon Schleifer, a yeshiva teacher in Wloclawek, Poland, who moved to Paterson, New Jersey and became a Hebrew school principal. Claims that Schleifer was a playwright are probably apocryphal, as contemporaries didn't recall this and the assertion only appeared once Wasserstein had won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
wn.com/Wendy_Wasserstein -
Will Jennings
Wilbur H. "Will" Jennings (born June 27, 1944, in Kilgore, Texas) is an American songwriter who is popularly known for writing the lyrics for My Heart Will Go On, the theme for the film Titanic. He has been inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame and has won several awards including a Grammy, two Golden Globe awards, and two Academy Awards.
Jennings attended school just outside Tyler, Texas, in the nearby Chapel Hill Independent School District. In 1967, Jennings earned his B.A. from Stephen F. Austin State University, located in Nacogdoches, Texas. He then taught at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire for three years and eventually attended the same institution in 1982.
Throughout his career, Jennings has written for a wide variety of artists including Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Joe Sample, Rodney Crowell, Mariah Carey, Jimmy Buffett, Barry Manilow and Roy Orbison.
With Steve Winwood, Jennings wrote a series albums including While You See A Chance, Arc of a Diver and Back in the High Life, an album which contained the hits Higher Love, The Finer Things, and Back in the High Life Again. Winwood won the Record Of The Year and Outstanding Male Vocal Performance. Both Jennings and Winwood were nominated for the Song of the Year award for "Higher Love."
wn.com/Will_Jennings -
William Finn
William Alan Finn (b. February 28, 1952, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. His musical Falsettos received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book.
Finn, who is Jewish, grew up in Natick, Massachusetts with his parents and siblings, Michael and Nancy. He majored in music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. When he graduated, he received the Hutchinson Fellowship (a musical composition award). He is also Adjunct Faculty Composer/Lyricist at New York University.
In 1992, Finn suffered deteriorating vision, dizziness and partial paralysis and was rushed to the hospital. He had arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, in his brain stem. In September, 1992, he had Gamma Knife surgery, which obliterated the AVM. After the surgery, Finn experienced a year of humbled serenity and constantly felt like he had a "new brain." Finn's 2002 musical A New Brain is based on his experience with AVM and his subsequent successful surgery. He lives with his life partner in New York City and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he is a composer and writer. Besides composing for the stage and screen, Finn is member of the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theater Writing faculty and he has been the Artistic Head of the Musical Theater Lab at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts for the past four years.
wn.com/William_Finn -
William Goldman
William Goldman (born August 12, 1931) is an American novelist, playwright, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, the son of Marion (née Weil) and Maurice Clarence Goldman, who worked in business. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in 1952 and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1956. Goldman lives in a penthouse apartment in New York City. His brother, James Goldman, who died in 1998, was a playwright and screenwriter.
According to his memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), Goldman began writing when he took a creative-writing course in college. His grades in the class were "horrible". An editor of Oberlin's literary magazine, he would submit short stories to the magazine anonymously; he recalls that the other editors, upon reading his submissions, remarked "We can't possibly publish this shit." He did not originally intend to become a screenwriter. His main interests were poetry, short stories, and novels. In 1956 he completed an MA thesis at Columbia University on the comedy of manners in America.
wn.com/William_Goldman -
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
wn.com/William_Shakespeare -
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson (pronounced /wɪli nɛlsən /; born April 30, 1933) is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed at the end of the 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana.
wn.com/Willie_Nelson -
Wilson Mizner
Wilson Mizner (May 19, 1876 – April 3, 1933) was an American playwright, raconteur, and entrepreneur. His best-known plays are The Deep Purple, produced in 1910, and The Greyhound, produced in 1912. He was manager and co-owner of The Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles, California, and was affiliated with his brother, Addison Mizner, in a series of scams and picaresque misadventures that inspired Stephen Sondheim's Road Show.
Wilson ("Bill") Mizner was born in Benicia, California, one of eight children including brothers William, Edgar, Murray, Addison, Henry, and Lansing and sister Mary. Sir Joshua Reynolds was their great great uncle. Their father, Lansing Bond Mizner was named Benjamin Harrison's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Central American states, and the family moved to Guatemala, the brothers spending their teenage years there—robbing churches, they later claimed.
In 1897, Addison and Wilson, with brothers William and Edgar, travelled north to the Klondike Gold Rush, which they spent bilking miners rather than looking for gold. Wilson operated badger games, managed fighters, robbed a restaurant to get chocolate for his girlfriend "Nellie the Pig" Lamore (saying "Your chocolates or your life!"), and grub-staked prospector Sid Grauman, later of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. He also met Wyatt Earp, who became a lifelong friend. In Skagway, Alaska Wilson met Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith who Wilson considered his mentor.
wn.com/Wilson_Mizner
Sondheim, Stephen Filmography
- Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age (2012)
- Out of My Dreams: Oscar Hammerstein II (2012)
- Something's Coming (2012)
- The Laurence Olivier Awards 2011 (2011)
- Sondheim! The Birthday Concert (2010)
- Sondheim! The Birthday Concert (2010)
- Recording: The History of Recorded Music (2010)
- Mr. Prince (2009)
- Streisand: Live in Concert (2009)
- Boscos endins - Making of (2007)
- West Side Memories (2003)
- Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2003)
- Camp (2003)
- Hey, Mr. Producer! The Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh (1998)
- Company (1996)
- The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts (1993)
- The Evening Standard Drama Awards (1990)
- Putting It Together: The Making of the Broadway Album (1985)
- The 38th Annual Tony Awards (1984)
- Reds (1981)
- Anatomy of a Song (1976)
- Stavisky... (1974)
- The Last of Sheila (1973)
- A Musical Celebration to Stephen Sondheim (1973)
- The 25th Annual Tony Awards (1971)
- Company: Original Cast Album (1970)
- Evening Primrose (1966)
karaoke
(Stephen Sondheim)
from the musical, Passion
Loving you is not a choice
It's who I am
Loving you is not a choice
Not much reason to rejoice
But it gives me purpose
Gives me voice
to say to the world
This is why I live
You are what I live
This is why I live
Loving you is why I do the things I do
Loving you is not in my control
But loving you I have a goal
For what's left of my life
I will live
and I will die
for you
It gives me purpose
gives me voice
to say to the world
This is why I live
Yes, this is why I live
Loving you is why I do the things I do
Loving you is not in my control
But loving you
I have a goal
for what's left of my life
I will live
and I will die
for you
I will live
and I will die
for you
Yes I know, goodbye for now,
How long? ~ a year, a day?
Yes I love you, yes you're with me,
here now, next to me, and worlds away!
See I free you, and I'll see you when I see you,
fine, OK?
Goodbye for now, again
Goodbye until whenever then
We're free, that's what we said we'd be,
at leave to come an' go, you as well as I,
somehow each "hello" makes it worth "goodbye" for now!
Goodbye for now, again
Goodbye until whenever then
We're free, that's what we said we'd be,
at leave to come an' go, you as well as I,
somehow each "hello" makes it worth "goodbye" for now!
(Stephen Sondheim)
Not a day goes by
Not a single day
But you’re somewhere a part of my life
And it looks like you’ll stay
As the days go by
I keep thinking when does it end
Where’s the day I’ll have started forgetting
But I just go on thinking and sweating
And cursing and crying
And turning and reaching
And waking and dying
And no, not a day goes by
Not a blessed day
But you’re still somehow part of my life
And you won't go away
So there’s hell to pay
And until I die
I’ll die day after day after day
After day
After day after day after day
Til the days go by
Til the days go by
Famous quotes by Stephen Sondheim:
"Sondheim Sings: Volume II (1946-60)."
"I was raised to be charming, not sincere."
"The concerts you enjoy together neighbors you annoy together children you destroy together that make marriage a joy"
"The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?"
"Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten."
"One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music."
"It ain't just a question of misunderstood, Deep down inside him, he's no good"
"Sometimes people leave you halfway through the woods. Do not let it grieve you, no one leaves for good"
"I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface."
"I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on."
RELEASE
ALBUMS
- My Name Is Stephen Joshua Sondheim
- Invocation/Forget War
- Love Is in the Air
- Comedy Tonight
- Take Me to the World
- Ten Years After I Was Born
- Talent/When I Get Famous
- Something's Coming
- My First Professional Show
- So Many People
- For Many Years, Hal Prince
- You Could Drive a Person Crazy
- The Wedding Is Off
- Now You Know
- Hal Prince and I Did Six Shows Together
- Franklin Shepard, Inc.
- Good Thing Going
- Sometimes a Song Changes Its Shape
- Waiting for the Girls Upstairs
- The Best Thing That Ever Happened
- My First Serious Relationship
- Happiness
- Fosca's Entrance (I Read)
- Is This What You Call Love?
- Loving You
- Overture / Night Waltz
- Prologue: "The Night Smiles..."
- Now
- Later
- Soon
- The Glamorous Life
- Remember?
- You Must Meet My Wife
- "A Virgin"
- Liaisons
- In Praise of Women
- Every Day a Little Death
- "The Tour's Over for a While"
- A Weekend in the Country
- Waste
- It's in Your Hands Now
- Gold!
- Brotherly Love
- The Game
- Addison's Trip
- That Was a Year
- Isn't He Something!
- Land Boom!
- Talent
- You
- The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened
- The Game (reprise)
- Addison's City
- Boca Raton
- Get Out / Go
- Finale
- Overture: Night Waltz
- Now / Later / Soon
- The Glamorous Life
- Remember?
- You Must Meet My Wife
- Liaisons
- In Praise of Women
- Every Day a Little Death
- A Weekend in the Country
- Night Waltz I: The Sun Won't Set
- Night Waltz II: The Sun Sits Low
- It Would Have Been Wonderful
- Perpetual Anticipation
- Send in the Clowns
- The Miller's Son
- Finale
- The Glamorous Life (1977 film cast)
- If You Can Find Me, I'm Here
- Meeting the Others
- You're One of Us / Charles and Ella
- Charles' Schedule / If You Can Find Me, I'm Here (reprise)
- Looking for Ella
- I Remember
- Charles Touched Me
- When
- Take Me to the World
- The First Dance
- The Security Guard / The Second Dance
- Another Dance
- The Dark Men Come / Take Me to the World (reprise)
- End Titles
- America
- Tonight
- Gee, Officer Krupke
- Everything's Coming Up Roses
- Comedy Tonight
- Everybody Ought to Have a Maid
- There's Something About a War
- Don't Laugh
- Anyone Can Whistle
- A Parade in Town
- A Hero Is Coming
- This Week, Americans
- Perhaps
- Everybody Loves Leona
- The Boy From...
- (If You Can Find Me) I'm Here
- Arts and Crafts
- I Remember Sky
- When?
- Take Me to the World
- Opening Title
- No Place Like London
- The Worst Pies in London
- Poor Thing
- My Friends
- Green Finch and Linnet Bird
- Alms! Alms!
- Johanna
- Pirelli's Miracle Elixir
- The Contest
- Wait
- Ladies in Their Sensitivities
- Pretty Women
- Epiphany
- A Little Priest
- Johanna
- God, That's Good!
- By the Sea
- Not While I'm Around
- Final Scene
- Opening
- Company
- The Little Things You Do Together
- Sorry-Grateful
- You Could Drive a Person Crazy
- Have I Got a Girl for You?
- Someone Is Waiting
- Another Hundred People
- Getting Married Today
- "What Did I Just Do?"
- Marry Me a Little
- Side by Side by Side
- What Would We Do Without You?
- Poor Baby
- Barcelona
- The Ladies Who Lunch
- "You Have a Good Third Husband, Joanne"
- Being Alive
- Opening
- Sunday in the Park With George
- "They Are Out Early Today..."
- No Life
- Color and Light
- Gossip
- The Day Off
- Everybody Loves Louis
- The One on the Left
- Finishing the Hat
- We Do Not Belong Together
- Beautiful
- Chaos
- Sunday
- Opening Fanfare
- Invocation and Instructions to the Audience
- "It is time we start our journey."
- I Love to Travel
- Dress Big
- I Love to Travel (reprise)
- All Aboard
- On the River Styx
- Ariadne
- The Frogs
- Hymn to Dionysos
- Hades
- It's Only a Play
- Shaw
- The Contest
- Fear No More
- All Aboard (reprise)
- Hymn to Dionysos (reprise)
- Final Instructions to the Audience
- Prologue
- The Advantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea
- "Kayama Yesaemon. A Samurai, but One of Little Consequence"
- There Is No Other Way
- Four Black Dragons
- "Disaster! The Americans Insist Upon Landing."
- Chrysanthemum Tea
- "My Lord Govenor of Uraga, You Have Saved My Life"
- Poems
- Welcome to Kanagawa
- March to the Treaty House
- Someone in a Tree
- "Whatever Happened Inside the Treaty House..."
- Please Hello!
- A Bowler Hat
- Pretty Lady
- Next
- Prayers
- Organ Prelude
- Prologue
- No Place Like London
- The Barber and His Wife
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- The Worst Pies in London
- Poor Thing
- My Friends
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- Green Finch and Linnet Bird
- Ah, Miss
- Johanna
- Pirelli's Miracle Elixir
- The Contest
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- Wait
- Pirelli's Death
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- Johanna
- Kiss Me, Part I
- Ladies in Their Sensitivities
- Kiss Me, Part II
- Pretty Women
- Epiphany
- A Little Priest
- God, That's Good!
- Johanna
- By the Sea
- Wigmaker Sequence
- The Letter
- Not While I'm Around
- Parlor Songs
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- City of Fire / Not While I'm Around
- Kiss Me (reprise)
- Lullaby
- Final Scene, Part I
- Final Scene, Part II
- Final Scene, Part III
- Final Scene, Part IV
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- End Credits
- Prologue: Into the Woods
- Cinderella at the Grave
- Hello, Little Girl
- I Guess This Is Goodbye / Maybe They're Magic
- Our Little World
- I Know Things Now
- A Very Nice Prince / First Midnight / Giants in the Sky
- Agony
- It Takes Two
- Stay With Me
- On the Steps of the Palace
- Ever After
- Prologue: So Happy
- Agony (reprise)
- Lament
- Any Moment / Moments in the World
- Your Fault
- Last Midnight
- No More
- No One Is Alone
- Finale: Children Will Listen
- God, That's Good!
- Johanna
- By the Sea
- Wigmaker Sequence
- The Letter
- Not While I'm Around
- "You know, dear, it's the strangest thing..."
- Parlor Songs
- Fogg's Asylum
- City on Fire
- The Judge's Return
- Final Scene
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- Overture
- Saturday Night
- Class
- Delighted, I'm Sure
- Love's a Bond
- Isn't It?
- In the Movies
- Exhibit A
- A Moment With You
- Saturday Night (reprise)
- Gracious Living Fantasy
- Montana Chem.
- So Many People
- One Wonderful Day
- Saturday Night (reprise)
- I Remember That
- 'Love's a Bond' Blues
- All for You
- That Kind of a Neighborhood
- What More Do I Need
- One Wonderful Day (Finale)
- Prologue/Overture
- Beautiful Girls
- Don't Look at Me
- Waiting for the Girls Upstairs
- Rain on the Roof
- Ah, Paris!
- Broadway Baby
- The Road You Didn't Take
- Bolero d'amore
- In Buddy's Eyes
- Who's That Woman?
- I'm Still Here
- Too Many Mornings
- Tiba Solo / Comedy Tonight
- Search for Mare's Sweat
- Lovely
- Tintinabula's Dance
- Vibrata's Dance
- Roman Emissary
- Everybody Ought to Have a Maid
- Riot at the Funeral
- Domina Returns (Fanfare) / My Bride
- Erronious Returns
- Orgy Music - Roman Style
- Lovely (reprise)
- In the Arena
- The Dirge
- The Rescue of Philia / The Chase
- Comedy Tonight and Playout
- Entr'acte
- Act Two Opening
- It's a Hit!
- Transition #4
- The Blob
- Growing Up (reprise)
- Good Thing Going
- The Blob (conclusion)
- Transition #5
- Bobbie and Jackie and Jack
- Not a Day Goes By (reprise)
- Transition #6
- Opening Doors
- Our Time, Part One
- Our Time, Part Two
- Bows
- Exit Music
- Back in Business (from Dick Tracy)
- Dawn (from Singing Out Loud, unproduced)
- The Glamorous Life (from the film version of a Little Night Music)
- What Can You Lose? (from Dick Tracy)
- More (from Dick Tracy)
- Stavisky Suite One (from Stavisky)
- Sand (from Singing Out Loud, unproduced)
- It Takes All Kinds (written for The Bird Cage)
- Little Dream (from The Bird Cage, unused)
- Stavisky Suite Two (from Stavisky)
- Sooner or Later (from Dick Tracy)
- Stavisky Suite Three (from Stavisky)
- If You Can Find Me, I'm Here (from Evening Primrose)
- I Remember (from Evening Primrose)
- When (from Evening Primrose)
- Take Me to the World (from Evening Primrose)
- Goodbye for Now (from Reds)
- Overture
- Night Waltz
- Now
- Later
- Soon
- The Glamorous Life
- Remember?
- You Must Meet My Wife
- Liaisons
- In Praise of Women / My Husband the Pig
- Every Day a Little Death
- A Weekend in the Country
- The Sun Won't Set
- Night Waltz II
- It Would Have Been Wonderful
- Perpetual Anticipation
- Dinner Table
- Send in the Clowns
- The Miller's Son
- Send in the Clowns (reprise)
- Last Waltz
- Company
- The Little Things You Do Together
- Sorry Grateful
- You Could Drive a Person Crazy
- Have I Got a Girl for You
- Someone Is Waiting
- Another Hundred People
- Getting Married Today
- Marry Me a Little
- Side by Side / What Would We Do Without You?
- Poor Baby
- Barcelona
- The Ladies Who Lunch
- Being Alive
- A Weekend in the Country
- Night Waltz I (The Sun Won't Set I)
- [dialogue]
- Night Waltz I (The Sun Won't Set II)
- [dialogue]
- Night Waltz II (The Sun Sits Low I)
- [dialogue]
- Night Waltz II (The Sun Sits Low II)
- [dialogue]
- Night Waltz II (The Sun Sits Low III)
- [dialogue]
- It Would Have Been Wonderful
- [dialogue]
- Perpetual Anticipation
- The Dinner Party ([dialogue])
- [dialogue]
- Send in the Clowns
- [dialogue]
- The Miller's Son
- [dialogue]
- Soon (reprise)
- [dialogue]
- You Must Meet My Wife (reprise)
- [dialogue]
- Liaisons (underscore)
- [dialogue]
- A Weekend in the Country (reprise)
- [dialogue]
- Every Day a Little Death (reprise)
- [dialogue]
- Send in the Clowns (reprise)
- The Last Waltz
- [bows]
- Overture
- Narrator's Introduction
- Me and My Town
- Miracle Introduction
- Miracle Song
- Fay's Arrival
- Cookie Speech
- There Won't Be Trumpets
- Hapgood's Arrival
- Simple (The Interrogation)
- Entr'acte
- Hooray for Hapgood
- Come Play Wiz Me
- Whistle Introduction
- Anyone Can Whistle
- Hoooray for Hapgood (reprise)
- A Parade in Town
- Transition: Tear Up Those Records
- Everybody Says Don't
- I've Got You to Lean On
- Transition: See What It Gets You
- See What It Gets You
- Transition: Cookie Arrest
- Cookie Chase
- There's Always a Woman
- Transition: With So Little to Be Sure Of
- With So Little to Be Sure Of
- Finale
- Overture
- Merrily We Roll Along
- That Frank
- First Transition
- Old Friends / Like It Was
- Franklin Shepard, Inc.
- Second Transition
- Old Friends (reprise)
- Growing Up
- Third Transition
- Not A Day Goes By
- Now You Know
- Act Two Opening
- It's A Hit!
- Fourth Transition
- The Blob
- Growing Up (reprise)
- Good Thing Going
- The Blob (Part II)
- Fifth Transition
- Bobby and Jackie and Jack
- Not A Day Goes By (reprise)
- Sixth Transition
- Opening Doors
- Seventh Transition
- Our Time
- Happiness
- First Letter
- Second Letter
- Third Letter
- Fourth Letter
- I Read
- Transition
- Garden Sequence
- Transition
- Trio
- Transition
- I Wish I Could Forget You
- Soldiers' Gossip
- Flashback
- Sunrise Letter
- Is This What You Call Love?
- Soldiers' Gossip
- Transition
- Forty Days
- Loving You
- Transition
- Soldiers' Gossip
- Farewell Letter
- No One Has Ever Loved Me
- Finale
- Invocation and Instructions to the Audience
- Putting It Together
- Rich and Happy # 1
- Merrily We Roll Along # 1 / Lovely
- Everybody Ought to Have a Maid
- Sooner or Later / I'm Calm / Impossible / Ah, but Underneath
- Hello, Little Girl
- My Husband the Pig / Every Day a Little Death
- Merrily We Roll Along # 2 / Have I Got a Girl for You!
- Pretty Women
- Now
- Bang!
- Country House
- Merrily We Roll Along # 3 / Could I Leave You?
- Overture
- Comedy Tonight
- Love, I Hear
- Free
- Lovely
- Pretty Little Picture
- Everybody Ought to Have a Maid
- I'm Calm
- Impossible
- Bring Me My Bride
- That Dirty Old Man
- That'll Show Him
- Lovely (reprise)
- Funeral Sequence
- Finale
- Prologue: Beautiful Girls
- Don't Look at Me
- Waiting for the Girls Upstairs
- Ah, Paris! / Broadway Baby
- The Road You Didn't Take
- In Buddy's Eyes
- Who's That Woman?
- I'm Still Here
- Too Many Mornings
- The Right Girl
- One More Kiss
- Could I Leave You?
- You're Gonna Love Tomorrow / Love Will See Us Through
- The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues
- Losing My Mind
- The Story of Lucy and Jessie
- Live, Laugh, Love / Finale
- Overture
- Night Waltz
- Now
- Later
- Soon
- The Glamourous Life
- Remember
- You Must Meet My Wife
- Liaisons
- In Praise of Women
- Every Day a Little Death
- A Weekend in the Country
- Night Waltz I
- Night Waltz II
- It Would Have Been Wonderful
- Perpetual Anticipation
- Send in the Clowns
- The Miller's Son
- Send in the Clowns (Reprise)
- Last Waltz
- Overture
- Do I Hear a Waltz?
- If Mama Was Married
- America
- One More Kiss
- Broadway Baby
- You Could Drive a Person Crazy
- Take Me to the World
- I Remember
- Silly People
- Two Fairy Tales
- Love Is in the Air
- Your Eyes Are Blue
- Pleasant Little Kingdom
- Too Many Mornings
- Beautiful Girls
- Don't Look at Me
- Montage
- Waiting for the Girls Upstairs
- Who's That Woman
- In Buddy's Eyes
- Country House
- Too Many Mornings
- Overture
- Beautiful Girls
- Don't Look at Me
- Waiting for the Girls Upstairs
- Rain on the Roof
- Ah, Paree!
- Broadway Baby
- The Road You Didn't Take
- In Buddy's Eyes
- Who's That Woman?
- I'm Still Here
- Too Many Mornings
- The Right Girl
- One More Kiss
- Could I Leave You?
- Loveland
- You're Gonna Love Tomorrow / Love Will See Us Through
- Love Is in the Air
- Pretty Little Picture
- The House of Marcus Lycus
- There's Something About a War
- So Many People
- Pour Le Sport
- What More Do I Need?
- Invocation and Instructions to the Audience
- I Remember
- There Won't Be Trumpets
- With So Little to Be Sure Of
- Marry Me a Little
- Happily Ever After
- Being Alive
- Beautiful Girls / Ah, Paree! / Buddy's Blues
- Losing My Mind
- All Things Bright and Beautiful
- Uptown, Downtown
- Too Many Mornings
- Invocation and Instructions to the Audience
- Saturday Night
- Isn't It?
- Saturday Night (reprise)
- Poems
- What More Do I Need?
- Another Hundred People
- With So Little to Be Sure Of
- Pretty Little Picture
- The House of Marcus Lycus
- Echo Song
- There's Something About a War
- Being Alive
- The Miller's Son
- Johanna
- Not a Day Goes By
- Someone in a Tree
- Send In the Clowns
- Old Friends
- Opening Fanfare
- [dialogue]
- Prologos: Invocation to the Gods and Instructions to the Audience
- [dialogue]
- Travel Music [Chant] / [dialogue]
- [dialogue]
- Parodos: The Frogs (Part One)
- [dialogue]
- Parados: The Frogs (Part Two)
- [dialogue]
- Hymnos: Evoe!
- [dialogue]
- Fanfare (Entrance of Pluto)
- [dialogue]
- Parabasis: It's Only a Play / [dialogue]
- [dialogue]
- Paean: Evoe for the Dead
- [dialogue]
- Invocation to the Muses
- The Contest / Dialgoue Scene
- Exodos: The Sound of Poets
- Finale: The Frogs
- [bows] / [exit music]
- Fear No More
- [Scene: Birthday Party, take 1]
- Company
- [Scene: Dinner at Harry and Sarah's]
- The Little Things You Do Together
- Sorry Grateful
- [Scene: On the terrace] / [Scene: Smoking pot]
- You Could Drive a Person Crazy
- [Scene: David and Jenny]
- Have I Got a Girl for You
- Someone Is Waiting
- Another Hundred People
- [Scene: The pulse of the city]
- Getting Married Today
- [Scene: The next bride]
- Marry Me a Little
- Boom, Crunch
- Giants in the Sky (original version)
- We Have to Give Her Someone
- Interesting Questions
- On the Steps of the Palace
- Second Midnight
- Witch's Rap
- Hello, Little Girl
- Okay, We Have to Go
- It Will All Be Alright
- Overture / Night Waltz
- [scene]
- Now / [scene]
- Later / Soon / Trio
- The Glamorous Life
- [scene]
- Remember? / [scene]
- You Must Meet My Wife / Liaisons
- Liaisons (continued)
- [scene]
- In Praise of Women
- [scene]
- Every Day a Little Death
- [scene]
- A Weekend in the Country
- If You Can Find Me I'm Here
- Charles Meets Mrs. Monday
- Charles and Ella
- Check List
- The Basement
- I Remember
- I Remember (underscore)
- When
- Sums / When (reprise)
- Take Me to the World
- The Ball
- Roscoe and the Guard
- The Ball, Part 2
- Escape
- Take Me to the World (reprise)
- Final Credits
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- No Place Like London
- The Worst Pies in London
- Poor Thing
- My Friends
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- Green Finch and Linnet Bird
- Ah, Miss
- Johanna
- Pirelli's Miracle Elixir
- The Contest
- The Ballad of Sweeney Todd
- Johanna
- Wait
- Kiss Me
- Ladies in Their Sensitivities
- Kiss Me
- Overture / Night Waltz (Love Takes Time)
- The Glamorous Life
- Now
- Soon
- Later
- You Must Meet My Wife
- Every Day a Little Death, Part 1
- Every Day a Little Death, Part 2
- A Weekend in the Country
- It Would Have Been Wonderful
- The First Smile
- Send in the Clowns
- The Second Smile
- Send in the Clowns (reprise)
- Love Takes Time / Finale
- End Credits
- The Glamorous Life (alternate take)
- Liaisons (unused)
- Love Takes Time (alternate take without vocal dubbing)
- Saturday Night
- Two Fairy Tales
- Can That Boy Foxtrot!
- All Things Bright and Beautiful / Bang! / All Things Bright and Beautiful, Part 2
- The Girls of Summer
- Uptown, Downtown
- So Many People
- Your Eyes Are Blue
- A Moment With You
- Marry Me a Little
- Happily Ever After
- Pour le sport
- Silly People
- There Won't Be Trumpets
- It Wasn't Meant to Happen
- Who Could Be Blue? / Little White House
- Act 1: Overture
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: Let Me Entertain You
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: Let Me Entertain You (reprise)
- Act 1: [scene change]
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: Some People
- Act 1: Some People / [scene change]
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: Small World
- Act 1: Baby June and Her Newsboys
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: Mr Goldstone, I Love You
- Act 1: [scene change] / Little Lamb
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: You'll Never Get Away From Me
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: Dainty June and Her Farmboys
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: If Mamma Was Married
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: All I Need Is the Girl
- Act 1: Scene Change
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: [dialogue]
- Act 1: Everything's Coming Up Roses
- Comedy Tonight / Love Is in the Air
- If Mamma Was Married
- You Must Meet My Wife
- The Little Things You Do Together
- Getting Married Today
- I Remember
- Can That Boy Foxtrot!
- You Could Drive a Person Crazy
- Another Hundred People
- Barcelona
- Marry Me a Little
- I Never Do Anything Twice
- Pretty Lady
- Beautiful Girls / Ah, Paree! / Buddy's Blues
- Broadway Baby
- The Advantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea
- There Is No Other Way
- Four Black Dragons
- Chrysanthemum Tea
- Poems
- Welcome to Kanagawa
- Someone in a Tree
- Please Hello
- A Bowler Hat
- Pretty Lady
- Next
- Introduction to "Take Me to the World"
- Evening Primrose: Take Me to the World
- Remarks / Introduction to "Merrily We Roll Along"
- Merrily We Roll Along: Medley: Merrily We Roll Along / The Hills of Tomorrow
- Introduction to "Children Will Listen"
- Into the Woods: Children Will Listen
- Remarks
- Merrily We Roll Along: Overture
- Introduction to "Green Finch and Linnet Bird"
- Sweeney Todd: Green Finch and Linnet Bird
- Remarks / Introduction to "A Little Priest"
- Sweeney Todd: A Little Priest
- Introduction to "Losing My Mind"
- Follies: Losing My Mind
- Overture
- Comedy Tonight
- The Play Begins
- Farewell
- Isn't It Amazing?
- Love, I Hear
- Parading
- Free
- What a Day!
- The House of Marcus Lycus
- The Plague
- Lovely
- I Love You
- Pretty Little Picture
- I Cannot Go!
- The Nose Needs Sharpening
- Everybody Ought to Have a Maid
- Only My Great Devotion to You...
- Calm
- My Tired Old Eyes Are Filled With Tears of Joy
- Impossible
- Everybody's Got the Right
- The Ballad of Booth
- [dialogue]
- How I Saved Roosevelt
- [scene change]
- [dialogue]
- [scene change]
- [dialogue]
- Gun Song
- The Ballad of Czolgosz
- [scene change]
- [dialogue]
- [scene change]
- [dialogue]
- Unworthy of Your Love
- [dialogue]
- The Ballad of Guiteau
- [scene change]
- [dialogue]
- [scene change]
- [dialogue]
- Another National Anthem
- [dialogue (Booth, Oswald)]
- Kennedy Assassination
- Something Just Broke
- Everybody's Got the Right
- Prelude: Me and My Town
- Miracle Song
- There Won't Be Trumpets
- Simple
- Come Play Wiz Me
- Anyone Can Whistle
- A Parade in Town
- Everybody Says Don't
- I've Got You to Lean On
- See What It Gets You
- The Cookie Chase
- With So Little to Be Sure Of
- Company
- The Little Things You Do Together
- Sorry - Grateful
- You Could Drive a Person Crazy
- Have I Got a Girl for You / Someone Is Waiting
- Another Hundred People
- Getting Married Today
- Side by Side / What Would We Do Without You?
- Poor Baby / Tick Tock
- Barcelona
- The Ladies Who Lunch
- Being Alive
- Finale
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Sondheim teaches 'My Friends' from Sweeney Todd
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:57
- Updated: 04 Dec 2012
Sondheim teaching Guildhall School students - Mrs Lovett is Jacqui Dankworth
http://wn.com/Sondheim_teaches_'My_Friends'_from_Sweeney_Todd
Sondheim teaching Guildhall School students - Mrs Lovett is Jacqui Dankworth
Stephen Sondheim & Andrew Lloyd Webber Dueling Piano
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:15
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
NOTE: *Please don't let the comments for this video turn into a big flame war over which one is better, I'll just delete those comments anyway.* So here we have two of the most talented people in the history of music sitting down for "Hey Mr. Producer" and giving us a wonderful little clip to argue about on the internet. As I watch this video I can only think of the amount of raw talent and skill that was in the room as they recorded this, the two of them together. Brilliant!!
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_Andrew_Lloyd_Webber_Dueling_Piano
NOTE: *Please don't let the comments for this video turn into a big flame war over which one is better, I'll just delete those comments anyway.* So here we have two of the most talented people in the history of music sitting down for "Hey Mr. Producer" and giving us a wonderful little clip to argue about on the internet. As I watch this video I can only think of the amount of raw talent and skill that was in the room as they recorded this, the two of them together. Brilliant!!
- published: 05 Jan 2010
- views: 73828
- author: RichieEastside
Full Interview: Stephen Sondheim
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 16:33
- Updated: 06 Dec 2012
Jeffrey Brown talks to master lyricist Stephen Sondheim about his new book, "Finishing the Hat."
http://wn.com/Full_Interview_Stephen_Sondheim
Jeffrey Brown talks to master lyricist Stephen Sondheim about his new book, "Finishing the Hat."
- published: 08 Dec 2010
- views: 21885
- author: PBSNewsHour
"Sunday" - Stephen Sondheim (BBC Proms 2010)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:02
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
The company perform "Sunday", from Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George", at the BBC Proms 2010; as part of the special celebration of Sondheim's 80th birth year,
http://wn.com/Sunday_Stephen_Sondheim_BBC_Proms_2010
The company perform "Sunday", from Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George", at the BBC Proms 2010; as part of the special celebration of Sondheim's 80th birth year,
- published: 17 Aug 2010
- views: 39190
- author: BuyKurious
Stephen Sondheim Interview
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 29:07
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
Stephen Sondheim talks about his early life and creative process with reference to his many award winning Broadway shows.
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_Interview
Stephen Sondheim talks about his early life and creative process with reference to his many award winning Broadway shows.
- published: 21 Sep 2011
- views: 13268
- author: onlineinquirer
Stephen Sondheim's Company - CLIP
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:53
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Set firmly in, and often about, New York, COMPANY follows five married, once married, or soon to be married couples and their mutual friend, Robert, a 35 year old bachelor who has been unable to connect in a long-term relationship. The relationships are presented in a series of vignettes, primarily through Bobby's eyes, so that we see the less than ideal aspects of commitment. However, it is obvious to the audience that the committed are happy. Eventually, Bobby learns that while relationships aren't perfect, they are a necessary part of "Being Alive."
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim's_Company_CLIP
Set firmly in, and often about, New York, COMPANY follows five married, once married, or soon to be married couples and their mutual friend, Robert, a 35 year old bachelor who has been unable to connect in a long-term relationship. The relationships are presented in a series of vignettes, primarily through Bobby's eyes, so that we see the less than ideal aspects of commitment. However, it is obvious to the audience that the committed are happy. Eventually, Bobby learns that while relationships aren't perfect, they are a necessary part of "Being Alive."
- published: 06 Nov 2012
- views: 848
- author: ImageEntertainment
Into the Woods - MTI Conversation Piece with Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 52:31
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
If any owners of this video wish to have it taken down, ask me to, and I will. Because you--yes, you--are the bon-diggety. Source: www.mtishowspace.com I edited all the parts together from here-- apparently, this video is only given out with request to producers of this show, to assist them. I have to say, I'm certain there's plenty of people out there who'd absolutely ADORE to just buy features like this on their own, to be so thoroughly immersed into these creative minds.
http://wn.com/Into_the_Woods_MTI_Conversation_Piece_with_Stephen_Sondheim_and_James_Lapine
If any owners of this video wish to have it taken down, ask me to, and I will. Because you--yes, you--are the bon-diggety. Source: www.mtishowspace.com I edited all the parts together from here-- apparently, this video is only given out with request to producers of this show, to assist them. I have to say, I'm certain there's plenty of people out there who'd absolutely ADORE to just buy features like this on their own, to be so thoroughly immersed into these creative minds.
- published: 08 Mar 2012
- views: 9996
- author: AgentDoubleOOP
Side by Side from Stephen Sondheim's Company - 65th Annual Tony Awards
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:32
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Featuring Neil Patrick Harris, the ensemble also stars Stephen Colbert, Patti LuPone, Jon Cryer and Christina Hendricks. Saw the entire performance broadcas on June 20, 2011 at local cinema, have to say NPH brought me tears. Company opened on Broadway on April 26, 1970 at the Alvin Theatre, where it ran for 705 performances and seven previews
http://wn.com/Side_by_Side_from_Stephen_Sondheim's_Company_65th_Annual_Tony_Awards
Featuring Neil Patrick Harris, the ensemble also stars Stephen Colbert, Patti LuPone, Jon Cryer and Christina Hendricks. Saw the entire performance broadcas on June 20, 2011 at local cinema, have to say NPH brought me tears. Company opened on Broadway on April 26, 1970 at the Alvin Theatre, where it ran for 705 performances and seven previews
- published: 05 Jul 2011
- views: 18894
- author: TheXnyr
Stephen Sondheim - on West Side Story
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:40
- Updated: 27 Aug 2012
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on West Side Story. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_on_West_Side_Story
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on West Side Story. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
- published: 21 Aug 2012
- views: 413
- author: masterworksbwayVEVO
A Conversation with Stephen Sondheim
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 66:38
- Updated: 08 Dec 2012
Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist, and Derek Bermel, Artist-in-Residence, Institute for Advanced Study American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim talks about his life and work in a conversation with Derek Bermel, the Institute's Artist-in-Residence. Sondheim, whose works for Broadway include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures, Into the Woods, and Assassins, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George in 1985. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. He is the author of Finishing the Hat (Knopf, 2010) and Look, I Made a Hat (Knopf, 2011). Sondheim has received seven Tony Awards, an Academy Award, and seven Grammy Awards. He also was among the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1993. More videos at video.ias.edu
http://wn.com/A_Conversation_with_Stephen_Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist, and Derek Bermel, Artist-in-Residence, Institute for Advanced Study American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim talks about his life and work in a conversation with Derek Bermel, the Institute's Artist-in-Residence. Sondheim, whose works for Broadway include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures, Into the Woods, and Assassins, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George in 1985. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. He is the author of Finishing the Hat (Knopf, 2010) and Look, I Made a Hat (Knopf, 2011). Sondheim has received seven Tony Awards, an Academy Award, and seven Grammy Awards. He also was among the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1993. More videos at video.ias.edu
- published: 09 May 2012
- views: 1312
- author: videosfromIAS
Sondheim teaches Send In The Clowns
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:03
- Updated: 06 Dec 2012
Stephen Sondheim teaches a student from the Guildhall School of Music, London a fragment of 'Send in the Clowns'
http://wn.com/Sondheim_teaches_Send_In_The_Clowns
Stephen Sondheim teaches a student from the Guildhall School of Music, London a fragment of 'Send in the Clowns'
- published: 18 Mar 2007
- views: 242159
- author: AllanWo
Stephen Sondheim's 'Company' comes to Singapore
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:07
- Updated: 08 Nov 2012
It's the final week of rehearsals before Hossan Leong's take on the Broadway production 'Company' takes the stage at the Drama Centre on 1 November. The cast and crew at Dream Academy are getting pumped, and could not be more ecstatic to translate Stephen Sondheim's musical into great Singaporean theatre. The musical comedy first opened on Broadway in 1970, and was later made famous by the 1996 London revival and most recently the 2006 Broadway revival. It follows the journey of a single man by the name of Bobby, played by 35-year-old Malaysian actor (and bachelor) Peter Ong. He learns, through his friends and relationships, the true meaning of love and commitment in a busy world where most people reject and fear the perennial question of "Should I get married?" Peter will be accompanied by familiar faces like Tan Kheng Hua, Petrina Kow and Seong Hui Xian.
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim's_'Company'_comes_to_Singapore
It's the final week of rehearsals before Hossan Leong's take on the Broadway production 'Company' takes the stage at the Drama Centre on 1 November. The cast and crew at Dream Academy are getting pumped, and could not be more ecstatic to translate Stephen Sondheim's musical into great Singaporean theatre. The musical comedy first opened on Broadway in 1970, and was later made famous by the 1996 London revival and most recently the 2006 Broadway revival. It follows the journey of a single man by the name of Bobby, played by 35-year-old Malaysian actor (and bachelor) Peter Ong. He learns, through his friends and relationships, the true meaning of love and commitment in a busy world where most people reject and fear the perennial question of "Should I get married?" Peter will be accompanied by familiar faces like Tan Kheng Hua, Petrina Kow and Seong Hui Xian.
- published: 30 Oct 2012
- views: 573
- author: inSingVideos
Audra McDonald on Stephen Sondheim's critical letter in NYT
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:26
- Updated: 25 May 2012
Full (47 min) Audra McDonald & Terry Gross Conversation www.npr.org twitter.com twitter.com Q&A; Excerpt: On Stephen Sondheim's critical letter in NYT about the production before it began previews "My agent called me and told me that this letter [appeared]. You know, you get certain calls and the phone rings in certain ways, and it just doesn't sound good. And that was one of those times. I was shocked. I knew how much Steve loves Porgy and Bess. He's never shied away from how passionate he is about this particular opera. And I think he is a genius; he is one of the great composers of American musical theater. And I respect his passion. But I know how I feel about this opera. I know how I've always felt about this opera. And I have never had anything but the greatest love and respect for this opera. So even if that's how it came across in the piece — or that's how it came across to Steve in the piece — there's not one iota of disdain for this opera in my heart. And that's apparent by my obsession with it over the years."
http://wn.com/Audra_McDonald_on_Stephen_Sondheim's_critical_letter_in_NYT
Full (47 min) Audra McDonald & Terry Gross Conversation www.npr.org twitter.com twitter.com Q&A; Excerpt: On Stephen Sondheim's critical letter in NYT about the production before it began previews "My agent called me and told me that this letter [appeared]. You know, you get certain calls and the phone rings in certain ways, and it just doesn't sound good. And that was one of those times. I was shocked. I knew how much Steve loves Porgy and Bess. He's never shied away from how passionate he is about this particular opera. And I think he is a genius; he is one of the great composers of American musical theater. And I respect his passion. But I know how I feel about this opera. I know how I've always felt about this opera. And I have never had anything but the greatest love and respect for this opera. So even if that's how it came across in the piece — or that's how it came across to Steve in the piece — there's not one iota of disdain for this opera in my heart. And that's apparent by my obsession with it over the years."
- published: 25 May 2012
- views: 436
- author: backdropshortfilms
Stephen Sondheim - on Gypsy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:16
- Updated: 27 Nov 2012
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on Gypsy. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_on_Gypsy
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on Gypsy. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
- published: 20 Nov 2012
- views: 399
- author: masterworksbwayVEVO
Stephen Sondheim The Stephen Sondheim Theatre marquee unveiling and lighting ceremony
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:41
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Stephen Sondheim The Stephen Sondheim Theatre marquee unveiling and lighting ceremony
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_The_Stephen_Sondheim_Theatre_marquee_unveiling_and_lighting_ceremony
Stephen Sondheim The Stephen Sondheim Theatre marquee unveiling and lighting ceremony
- published: 07 Dec 2012
- author: PhotographerBiz
Stephen Sondheim Nathan Lane John Weidman The Stephen Sondheim Theatre marquee unve
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:21
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Stephen Sondheim Nathan Lane John Weidman The Stephen Sondheim Theatre marquee unve
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_Nathan_Lane_John_Weidman_The_Stephen_Sondheim_Theatre_marquee_unve
Stephen Sondheim Nathan Lane John Weidman The Stephen Sondheim Theatre marquee unve
- published: 07 Dec 2012
- views: 1
- author: PhotographerBiz
Stephen Sondheim's Company
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:14
- Updated: 04 Dec 2012
Set firmly in, and often about, New York, COMPANY follows five married, once married, or soon to be married couples and their mutual friend, Robert, a 35 year old bachelor who has been unable to connect in a long-term relationship. The relationships are presented in a series of vignettes, primarily through Bobby's eyes, so that we see the less than ideal aspects of commitment. However, it is obvious to the audience that the committed are happy. Eventually, Bobby learns that while relationships aren't perfect, they are a necessary part of "Being Alive."
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim's_Company
Set firmly in, and often about, New York, COMPANY follows five married, once married, or soon to be married couples and their mutual friend, Robert, a 35 year old bachelor who has been unable to connect in a long-term relationship. The relationships are presented in a series of vignettes, primarily through Bobby's eyes, so that we see the less than ideal aspects of commitment. However, it is obvious to the audience that the committed are happy. Eventually, Bobby learns that while relationships aren't perfect, they are a necessary part of "Being Alive."
- published: 17 Oct 2012
- views: 660
- author: ImageEntertainment
Stephen Sondheim - on the Orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:30
- Updated: 11 Sep 2012
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on the Orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_on_the_Orchestrations_of_Jonathan_Tunick
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on the Orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
- published: 11 Sep 2012
- views: 240
- author: masterworksbwayVEVO
Melissa Errico- Loving You from Stephen Sondheim's musical PASSION
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:37
- Updated: 19 Nov 2012
From the sold-out "Melissa Errico Back For More! Legrand, Broadway and Other Things You've Asked For..." April 2012 Directed by RICHARD JAY-ALEXANDER; Musical Director JOHN ODDO
http://wn.com/Melissa_Errico_Loving_You_from_Stephen_Sondheim's_musical_PASSION
From the sold-out "Melissa Errico Back For More! Legrand, Broadway and Other Things You've Asked For..." April 2012 Directed by RICHARD JAY-ALEXANDER; Musical Director JOHN ODDO
- published: 30 May 2012
- views: 1419
- author: pennyvip
Stephen Sondheim - Happiness (1994)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:12
- Updated: 08 Nov 2012
from : Passion (1994) "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use"
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_Happiness_1994
from : Passion (1994) "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use"
- published: 10 Jun 2012
- views: 1472
- author: Leroy Goldenberg
Stephen Sondheim Exclusive Inteview! - Broadway Teachers Workshop 2011
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:30
- Updated: 16 Nov 2012
Writer Jonathan Marc Sherman interviews the iconic Stephen Sondheim at the 2011 Broadway Teachers Workshop in New York City, where he share feelings and wonderful stories about the personal impact teachers have had on him throughout his life.
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_Exclusive_Inteview!_Broadway_Teachers_Workshop_2011
Writer Jonathan Marc Sherman interviews the iconic Stephen Sondheim at the 2011 Broadway Teachers Workshop in New York City, where he share feelings and wonderful stories about the personal impact teachers have had on him throughout his life.
- published: 01 Aug 2011
- views: 3930
- author: mtishows
Stephen Sondheim - on What Makes A Good Cast Album Producer
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:41
- Updated: 11 Sep 2012
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on What Makes A Good Cast Album Producer. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_on_What_Makes_A_Good_Cast_Album_Producer
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on What Makes A Good Cast Album Producer. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
- published: 06 Sep 2012
- views: 194
- author: masterworksbwayVEVO
Stephen Sondheim - on Creating an Effective Cast Album
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:26
- Updated: 23 Oct 2012
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on Creating an Effective Cast Album. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_on_Creating_an_Effective_Cast_Album
Music video by Stephen Sondheim performing on Creating an Effective Cast Album. (C) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
- published: 06 Sep 2012
- views: 151
- author: masterworksbwayVEVO
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David Davila LIVE - The Stephen Sondheim Song
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:42
- Updated: 10 Sep 2012
David Davila sings his original song "The Stephen Sondheim Song" along side Tara Fike at DAVID DAVILA LIVE @ The Josephine Theatre 2010. Christopher D. Littlefield - Music Director Tara Fike - Drums/ Guitar Eric Matthew Cortez - Bass January 2nd, 2010
http://wn.com/David_Davila_LIVE_The_Stephen_Sondheim_Song
David Davila sings his original song "The Stephen Sondheim Song" along side Tara Fike at DAVID DAVILA LIVE @ The Josephine Theatre 2010. Christopher D. Littlefield - Music Director Tara Fike - Drums/ Guitar Eric Matthew Cortez - Bass January 2nd, 2010
- published: 02 Sep 2010
- views: 675
- author: David Davila
Stephen Sondheim's Company - CLIP
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:53
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Set firmly in, and often about, New York, COMPANY follows five married, once married, or soon to be married couples and their mutual friend, Robert, a 35 year old bachelor who has been unable to connect in a long-term relationship. The relationships are presented in a series of vignettes, primarily through Bobby's eyes, so that we see the less than ideal aspects of commitment. However, it is obvious to the audience that the committed are happy. Eventually, Bobby learns that while relationships aren't perfect, they are a necessary part of "Being Alive."
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim's_Company_CLIP
Set firmly in, and often about, New York, COMPANY follows five married, once married, or soon to be married couples and their mutual friend, Robert, a 35 year old bachelor who has been unable to connect in a long-term relationship. The relationships are presented in a series of vignettes, primarily through Bobby's eyes, so that we see the less than ideal aspects of commitment. However, it is obvious to the audience that the committed are happy. Eventually, Bobby learns that while relationships aren't perfect, they are a necessary part of "Being Alive."
- published: 06 Nov 2012
- views: 848
- author: ImageEntertainment
The Glamorous Life: Stephen Sondheim
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:41
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
from "A Little Night Music," by Stephen Sondheim
http://wn.com/The_Glamorous_Life_Stephen_Sondheim
Sondheim "Company" Dean Jones "Happily Ever After" Complete Live Rare Cut Song
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:20
- Updated: 11 Oct 2012
Dean Jones performing the original finale of "Company" in the Boston tryout, "Happily Ever After". With Jonathan Tunick's wonderful orchestration, never recorded (Craig Lucas when he was a performer recorded it complete with piano for his Sondheim review "Marry Me a Little" and Larry Kurt performed the first section on the "Sondheim Tribute" album). A live audience tape, apparently, and missing the first phrase, which I patched from an identical repetition of it later in the song; and also cleaned it up throughout. For "Company" fans, a holy grail. This was the ending that provoked the infamous Variety review that "Company" was 'only for fags'.
http://wn.com/Sondheim_Company_Dean_Jones_Happily_Ever_After_Complete_Live_Rare_Cut_Song
Dean Jones performing the original finale of "Company" in the Boston tryout, "Happily Ever After". With Jonathan Tunick's wonderful orchestration, never recorded (Craig Lucas when he was a performer recorded it complete with piano for his Sondheim review "Marry Me a Little" and Larry Kurt performed the first section on the "Sondheim Tribute" album). A live audience tape, apparently, and missing the first phrase, which I patched from an identical repetition of it later in the song; and also cleaned it up throughout. For "Company" fans, a holy grail. This was the ending that provoked the infamous Variety review that "Company" was 'only for fags'.
- published: 17 Aug 2011
- views: 3308
- author: jonthesYT
Send In The Clowns - Stephen Sondheim
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:40
- Updated: 05 Nov 2012
Hello everybody! This is my new video, it's my own personal interpretation (it's such like an interior dialogue) of a great musical standard written by one of greatest songwriter of ever. I dreamed for all my life to have the chance to play this song, somehow my life has always been in balance between reality and farces, this time I only took something which is real within my heart, and I put it on stage, I wanted to show how is so common for many people to live everyday their lifes, constantly thinking about what life should be if they had the possibility to do something else , something which deeply connected with their attitude. Unfortunately many times you wake up one day, you look your face in the mirror and it's too late to do what you want about your life just like the protagonist of the video. Enjoy and thank you all to give us the possibility to show our art! I want to say thanks to MrPianoSolo who takes care of my piano and music training (without him I would never have the chance to do it...!!!) and Mrs. Eleonora D'Ettole who takes care of my voice so well and she's the greatest vocal coach I ever had!
http://wn.com/Send_In_The_Clowns_Stephen_Sondheim
Hello everybody! This is my new video, it's my own personal interpretation (it's such like an interior dialogue) of a great musical standard written by one of greatest songwriter of ever. I dreamed for all my life to have the chance to play this song, somehow my life has always been in balance between reality and farces, this time I only took something which is real within my heart, and I put it on stage, I wanted to show how is so common for many people to live everyday their lifes, constantly thinking about what life should be if they had the possibility to do something else , something which deeply connected with their attitude. Unfortunately many times you wake up one day, you look your face in the mirror and it's too late to do what you want about your life just like the protagonist of the video. Enjoy and thank you all to give us the possibility to show our art! I want to say thanks to MrPianoSolo who takes care of my piano and music training (without him I would never have the chance to do it...!!!) and Mrs. Eleonora D'Ettole who takes care of my voice so well and she's the greatest vocal coach I ever had!
- published: 05 Apr 2010
- views: 9234
- author: RomanFrancis
Christel Alexander - I NEVER DO ANYTHING TWICE - live cabaret performance
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:57
- Updated: 22 Aug 2011
Song by Stephen Sondheim from the movie THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION (The Madame's Song). Christel Alexander performing, with Musical Director/Arranger Todd Schroeder on piano at Tom Rolla's Gardenia Supper Club, Hollywood, California.
http://wn.com/Christel_Alexander_I_NEVER_DO_ANYTHING_TWICE_live_cabaret_performance
Song by Stephen Sondheim from the movie THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION (The Madame's Song). Christel Alexander performing, with Musical Director/Arranger Todd Schroeder on piano at Tom Rolla's Gardenia Supper Club, Hollywood, California.
- published: 14 Aug 2011
- views: 738
- author: ChristelAlexander
Stephen Sondheim - Not A Day Goes By, arr. Robert Page
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:47
- Updated: 19 Nov 2012
"Not A Day Goes By" (from Merrily We Roll Along) "Johanna" (from Sweeney Todd) "No One is Alone" (from Into the Woods) "A Parade in Town" (from Anyone Can Whistle) Performed by the Shorter Chorus Dr. Matthew Hoch, conductor Grant Jordan, tenor Jonathan Altman, baritone Neal Echols, baritone Thomas Williams, piano Recorded live on April 5th, 2008 in Brookes Chapel at Shorter College
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim_Not_A_Day_Goes_By,_arr_Robert_Page
"Not A Day Goes By" (from Merrily We Roll Along) "Johanna" (from Sweeney Todd) "No One is Alone" (from Into the Woods) "A Parade in Town" (from Anyone Can Whistle) Performed by the Shorter Chorus Dr. Matthew Hoch, conductor Grant Jordan, tenor Jonathan Altman, baritone Neal Echols, baritone Thomas Williams, piano Recorded live on April 5th, 2008 in Brookes Chapel at Shorter College
- published: 10 May 2008
- views: 9365
- author: shortermusic
Angela Lansbury - Me and My Town (Live) Very Rare
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:41
- Updated: 27 Oct 2012
LET ME KNOW WHAT OTHER SONGS FROM THIS LIVE RECORDING OF "ANYONE CAN WHISTLE" YOU'D LIKE TO SEE POSTED. Angela Lansbury sings "Me and My Town" from the iconic musical "Anyone Can Whistle." Lyrics and Music by Stephen Sondheim.
http://wn.com/Angela_Lansbury_Me_and_My_Town_Live_Very_Rare
LET ME KNOW WHAT OTHER SONGS FROM THIS LIVE RECORDING OF "ANYONE CAN WHISTLE" YOU'D LIKE TO SEE POSTED. Angela Lansbury sings "Me and My Town" from the iconic musical "Anyone Can Whistle." Lyrics and Music by Stephen Sondheim.
- published: 01 Aug 2009
- views: 4801
- author: orvgg
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:53
- Updated: 05 Dec 2012
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
http://wn.com/PASSION_Live_from_Lincoln_Center_Part_1
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
- published: 11 Nov 2009
- views: 4595
- author: AutumnToSpring
JUDY COLLINS - "Send In The Clowns" LIVE 1991
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:49
- Updated: 04 Dec 2012
Judy Collins sings Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns" at a 1991 concert in California. ON piano is her musical director at the time, Joseph Joubert. Collins recorded the song for her 1975 album Judith. By that point the song had already been recorded by dozens of artists, but it was Judy's version that made it a worldwide hit, reaching the Top 40 Billboard Charts first in 1975, then again in 1977 when it reached the Top 20. The song won the1976 Grammy Award for Song of the Year.
http://wn.com/JUDY_COLLINS_Send_In_The_Clowns_LIVE_1991
Judy Collins sings Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns" at a 1991 concert in California. ON piano is her musical director at the time, Joseph Joubert. Collins recorded the song for her 1975 album Judith. By that point the song had already been recorded by dozens of artists, but it was Judy's version that made it a worldwide hit, reaching the Top 40 Billboard Charts first in 1975, then again in 1977 when it reached the Top 20. The song won the1976 Grammy Award for Song of the Year.
- published: 11 Oct 2009
- views: 24374
- author: betahifi
"The Last Midnight" - INTO THE WOODS (West End LIVE 2010)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:27
- Updated: 02 Dec 2012
Hannah Waddingham performs this song from Stephen Sondheim's musical INTO THE WOODS at West End LIVE 2010. www.todomusicales.com
http://wn.com/The_Last_Midnight_INTO_THE_WOODS_West_End_LIVE_2010
Hannah Waddingham performs this song from Stephen Sondheim's musical INTO THE WOODS at West End LIVE 2010. www.todomusicales.com
- published: 24 Jun 2010
- views: 8819
- author: todoMUSICALEStv
Angela Lansbury - Miracle Song (Live 1964) Very Rare
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:20
- Updated: 10 May 2012
An extremely rare live recording from the iconic flop musical "Anyone can Whistle," music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. No copyright infringement intended.
http://wn.com/Angela_Lansbury_Miracle_Song_Live_1964_Very_Rare
An extremely rare live recording from the iconic flop musical "Anyone can Whistle," music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. No copyright infringement intended.
- published: 20 Jul 2009
- views: 3608
- author: orvgg
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:39
- Updated: 10 Oct 2012
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah. I'll upload the rest as soon as possible.
http://wn.com/PASSION_Live_from_Lincoln_Center_Part_4
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah. I'll upload the rest as soon as possible.
- published: 11 Nov 2009
- views: 2192
- author: AutumnToSpring
Sooner or Later - Ruthie Henshall - Dick Tracy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:44
- Updated: 05 Dec 2012
Ruthie Henshall sings "Sooner or Later" to John Barrowman. Sondheim composed the song for "Dick Tracy." This excerpt is from the highly recommended Region 1 DVD "Putting It Together" of a live 1999 performance. Other excerpts are available at www.theBestArts.com Browse our website at www.theBestArts.com for more great dance, music and musical theatre performances. More info soon...
http://wn.com/Sooner_or_Later_Ruthie_Henshall_Dick_Tracy
Ruthie Henshall sings "Sooner or Later" to John Barrowman. Sondheim composed the song for "Dick Tracy." This excerpt is from the highly recommended Region 1 DVD "Putting It Together" of a live 1999 performance. Other excerpts are available at www.theBestArts.com Browse our website at www.theBestArts.com for more great dance, music and musical theatre performances. More info soon...
- published: 07 Jan 2009
- views: 59536
- author: BestArtsSondheim
Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods - Available now from Digital Theatre
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:38
- Updated: 11 Dec 2012
Watch online or download the full show to your desktop now at www.digitaltheatre.com. Watch this Olivier Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical, directed by Timothy Sheader at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Captured in high definition from multiple angles by Digital Theatre in front of a live audience at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London in October 2010.
http://wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim's_Into_the_Woods_Available_now_from_Digital_Theatre
Watch online or download the full show to your desktop now at www.digitaltheatre.com. Watch this Olivier Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical, directed by Timothy Sheader at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Captured in high definition from multiple angles by Digital Theatre in front of a live audience at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London in October 2010.
- published: 24 Mar 2011
- views: 52817
- author: digitaltheatre
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 5
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:00
- Updated: 10 May 2012
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
http://wn.com/PASSION_Live_from_Lincoln_Center_Part_5
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
- published: 14 Nov 2009
- views: 1754
- author: AutumnToSpring
Not A Day Goes By by Bernadette Peters
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:35
- Updated: 11 Dec 2012
Bernadette Peters's version of Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim live from Royal Festival Hall London. A classic! - I love the glimmer of hope that happens at 3:32.
http://wn.com/Not_A_Day_Goes_By_by_Bernadette_Peters
Bernadette Peters's version of Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim live from Royal Festival Hall London. A classic! - I love the glimmer of hope that happens at 3:32.
- published: 20 Feb 2008
- views: 298070
- author: Eric Martin
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:00
- Updated: 10 Oct 2012
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
http://wn.com/PASSION_Live_from_Lincoln_Center_Part_6
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
- published: 14 Nov 2009
- views: 2350
- author: AutumnToSpring
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 8
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:04
- Updated: 11 May 2012
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
http://wn.com/PASSION_Live_from_Lincoln_Center_Part_8
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
- published: 14 Nov 2009
- views: 1746
- author: AutumnToSpring
Being Alive by Bernadette Peters
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:04
- Updated: 11 Dec 2012
Bernadette Peters's version of Being Alive (Company, Stephen Sondheim). Booyah! This is one of her signature songs and you can see why!
http://wn.com/Being_Alive_by_Bernadette_Peters
Bernadette Peters's version of Being Alive (Company, Stephen Sondheim). Booyah! This is one of her signature songs and you can see why!
- published: 23 Mar 2008
- views: 167983
- author: Eric Martin
Gregory Harrison "Live, Laugh,Love" from Follies (2001)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:45
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
Gregory Harrison singing "Live, Love, Laugh" from the 2001 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's FOLLIES.
http://wn.com/Gregory_Harrison_Live,_Laugh,Love_from_Follies_2001
Gregory Harrison singing "Live, Love, Laugh" from the 2001 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's FOLLIES.
- published: 12 Mar 2010
- views: 3844
- author: moviefoyer78
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 10
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:08
- Updated: 11 May 2012
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
http://wn.com/PASSION_Live_from_Lincoln_Center_Part_10
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
- published: 14 Nov 2009
- views: 1968
- author: AutumnToSpring
"Someone in a Tree" - Pacific Overtures
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:23
- Updated: 30 Nov 2012
"Someone in a Tree" from the 1976 Broadway production of Pacific Overtures, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
http://wn.com/Someone_in_a_Tree_Pacific_Overtures
"Someone in a Tree" from the 1976 Broadway production of Pacific Overtures, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
- published: 31 Mar 2007
- views: 41382
- author: matadorbell
3:42
David Davila LIVE - The Stephen Sondheim Song
David Davila sings his original song "The Stephen Sondheim Song" along side Tara Fike at D...
published: 02 Sep 2010
author: David Davila
David Davila LIVE - The Stephen Sondheim Song
David Davila sings his original song "The Stephen Sondheim Song" along side Tara Fike at DAVID DAVILA LIVE @ The Josephine Theatre 2010. Christopher D. Littlefield - Music Director Tara Fike - Drums/ Guitar Eric Matthew Cortez - Bass January 2nd, 2010
- published: 02 Sep 2010
- views: 675
- author: David Davila
2:53
Stephen Sondheim's Company - CLIP
Set firmly in, and often about, New York, COMPANY follows five married, once married, or s...
published: 06 Nov 2012
author: ImageEntertainment
Stephen Sondheim's Company - CLIP
Set firmly in, and often about, New York, COMPANY follows five married, once married, or soon to be married couples and their mutual friend, Robert, a 35 year old bachelor who has been unable to connect in a long-term relationship. The relationships are presented in a series of vignettes, primarily through Bobby's eyes, so that we see the less than ideal aspects of commitment. However, it is obvious to the audience that the committed are happy. Eventually, Bobby learns that while relationships aren't perfect, they are a necessary part of "Being Alive."
- published: 06 Nov 2012
- views: 848
- author: ImageEntertainment
4:20
Sondheim "Company" Dean Jones "Happily Ever After" Complete Live Rare Cut Song
Dean Jones performing the original finale of "Company" in the Boston tryout, "Happily Ever...
published: 17 Aug 2011
author: jonthesYT
Sondheim "Company" Dean Jones "Happily Ever After" Complete Live Rare Cut Song
Dean Jones performing the original finale of "Company" in the Boston tryout, "Happily Ever After". With Jonathan Tunick's wonderful orchestration, never recorded (Craig Lucas when he was a performer recorded it complete with piano for his Sondheim review "Marry Me a Little" and Larry Kurt performed the first section on the "Sondheim Tribute" album). A live audience tape, apparently, and missing the first phrase, which I patched from an identical repetition of it later in the song; and also cleaned it up throughout. For "Company" fans, a holy grail. This was the ending that provoked the infamous Variety review that "Company" was 'only for fags'.
- published: 17 Aug 2011
- views: 3308
- author: jonthesYT
4:40
Send In The Clowns - Stephen Sondheim
Hello everybody! This is my new video, it's my own personal interpretation (it's such like...
published: 05 Apr 2010
author: RomanFrancis
Send In The Clowns - Stephen Sondheim
Hello everybody! This is my new video, it's my own personal interpretation (it's such like an interior dialogue) of a great musical standard written by one of greatest songwriter of ever. I dreamed for all my life to have the chance to play this song, somehow my life has always been in balance between reality and farces, this time I only took something which is real within my heart, and I put it on stage, I wanted to show how is so common for many people to live everyday their lifes, constantly thinking about what life should be if they had the possibility to do something else , something which deeply connected with their attitude. Unfortunately many times you wake up one day, you look your face in the mirror and it's too late to do what you want about your life just like the protagonist of the video. Enjoy and thank you all to give us the possibility to show our art! I want to say thanks to MrPianoSolo who takes care of my piano and music training (without him I would never have the chance to do it...!!!) and Mrs. Eleonora D'Ettole who takes care of my voice so well and she's the greatest vocal coach I ever had!
- published: 05 Apr 2010
- views: 9234
- author: RomanFrancis
4:57
Christel Alexander - I NEVER DO ANYTHING TWICE - live cabaret performance
Song by Stephen Sondheim from the movie THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION (The Madame's Song). C...
published: 14 Aug 2011
author: ChristelAlexander
Christel Alexander - I NEVER DO ANYTHING TWICE - live cabaret performance
Song by Stephen Sondheim from the movie THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION (The Madame's Song). Christel Alexander performing, with Musical Director/Arranger Todd Schroeder on piano at Tom Rolla's Gardenia Supper Club, Hollywood, California.
- published: 14 Aug 2011
- views: 738
- author: ChristelAlexander
7:47
Stephen Sondheim - Not A Day Goes By, arr. Robert Page
"Not A Day Goes By" (from Merrily We Roll Along) "Johanna" (from Sweeney Todd) "No One is ...
published: 10 May 2008
author: shortermusic
Stephen Sondheim - Not A Day Goes By, arr. Robert Page
"Not A Day Goes By" (from Merrily We Roll Along) "Johanna" (from Sweeney Todd) "No One is Alone" (from Into the Woods) "A Parade in Town" (from Anyone Can Whistle) Performed by the Shorter Chorus Dr. Matthew Hoch, conductor Grant Jordan, tenor Jonathan Altman, baritone Neal Echols, baritone Thomas Williams, piano Recorded live on April 5th, 2008 in Brookes Chapel at Shorter College
- published: 10 May 2008
- views: 9365
- author: shortermusic
4:41
Angela Lansbury - Me and My Town (Live) Very Rare
LET ME KNOW WHAT OTHER SONGS FROM THIS LIVE RECORDING OF "ANYONE CAN WHISTLE" YOU'D LIKE T...
published: 01 Aug 2009
author: orvgg
Angela Lansbury - Me and My Town (Live) Very Rare
LET ME KNOW WHAT OTHER SONGS FROM THIS LIVE RECORDING OF "ANYONE CAN WHISTLE" YOU'D LIKE TO SEE POSTED. Angela Lansbury sings "Me and My Town" from the iconic musical "Anyone Can Whistle." Lyrics and Music by Stephen Sondheim.
- published: 01 Aug 2009
- views: 4801
- author: orvgg
9:53
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 1
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), ...
published: 11 Nov 2009
author: AutumnToSpring
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 1
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
- published: 11 Nov 2009
- views: 4595
- author: AutumnToSpring
4:49
JUDY COLLINS - "Send In The Clowns" LIVE 1991
Judy Collins sings Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns" at a 1991 concert in California...
published: 11 Oct 2009
author: betahifi
JUDY COLLINS - "Send In The Clowns" LIVE 1991
Judy Collins sings Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns" at a 1991 concert in California. ON piano is her musical director at the time, Joseph Joubert. Collins recorded the song for her 1975 album Judith. By that point the song had already been recorded by dozens of artists, but it was Judy's version that made it a worldwide hit, reaching the Top 40 Billboard Charts first in 1975, then again in 1977 when it reached the Top 20. The song won the1976 Grammy Award for Song of the Year.
- published: 11 Oct 2009
- views: 24374
- author: betahifi
3:27
"The Last Midnight" - INTO THE WOODS (West End LIVE 2010)
Hannah Waddingham performs this song from Stephen Sondheim's musical INTO THE WOODS at Wes...
published: 24 Jun 2010
author: todoMUSICALEStv
"The Last Midnight" - INTO THE WOODS (West End LIVE 2010)
Hannah Waddingham performs this song from Stephen Sondheim's musical INTO THE WOODS at West End LIVE 2010. www.todomusicales.com
- published: 24 Jun 2010
- views: 8819
- author: todoMUSICALEStv
6:20
Angela Lansbury - Miracle Song (Live 1964) Very Rare
An extremely rare live recording from the iconic flop musical "Anyone can Whistle," music ...
published: 20 Jul 2009
author: orvgg
Angela Lansbury - Miracle Song (Live 1964) Very Rare
An extremely rare live recording from the iconic flop musical "Anyone can Whistle," music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. No copyright infringement intended.
- published: 20 Jul 2009
- views: 3608
- author: orvgg
8:39
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 4
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), ...
published: 11 Nov 2009
author: AutumnToSpring
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 4
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah. I'll upload the rest as soon as possible.
- published: 11 Nov 2009
- views: 2192
- author: AutumnToSpring
2:44
Sooner or Later - Ruthie Henshall - Dick Tracy
Ruthie Henshall sings "Sooner or Later" to John Barrowman. Sondheim composed the song for ...
published: 07 Jan 2009
author: BestArtsSondheim
Sooner or Later - Ruthie Henshall - Dick Tracy
Ruthie Henshall sings "Sooner or Later" to John Barrowman. Sondheim composed the song for "Dick Tracy." This excerpt is from the highly recommended Region 1 DVD "Putting It Together" of a live 1999 performance. Other excerpts are available at www.theBestArts.com Browse our website at www.theBestArts.com for more great dance, music and musical theatre performances. More info soon...
- published: 07 Jan 2009
- views: 59536
- author: BestArtsSondheim
Vimeo results:
0:27
Stephen Sondheim's Assassins Teaser
www.assassins-chicago.com
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by John Weidman
Prod...
published: 12 Oct 2012
author: Billy Pacholski
Stephen Sondheim's Assassins Teaser
www.assassins-chicago.com
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by John Weidman
Produced and Directed by Billy Pacholski
Music Direction by Robert Ollis
October 12 - November 11, 3111 N. Western Avenue, Chicago.
For information and tickets visit www.assassins-chicago.com, or email tickets@thegoforth.com
5:15
Pretty Women (Stephen Sondheim)
Alex Samaras Sings Stephen Sondheim
Ernesto Cervini (drums)
Bram Gielen(bass)
Tyson Kerr(p...
published: 04 Jul 2011
author: alex samaras
Pretty Women (Stephen Sondheim)
Alex Samaras Sings Stephen Sondheim
Ernesto Cervini (drums)
Bram Gielen(bass)
Tyson Kerr(piano)
17:28
Stephen Sondheim Celebration Video
Production Sound Mixer: Direct connect to Panasonic HVX-200...
published: 23 Nov 2009
author: Adam Rabinowitz
Stephen Sondheim Celebration Video
Production Sound Mixer: Direct connect to Panasonic HVX-200
Youtube results:
1:38
Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods - Available now from Digital Theatre
Watch online or download the full show to your desktop now at www.digitaltheatre.com. Watc...
published: 24 Mar 2011
author: digitaltheatre
Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods - Available now from Digital Theatre
Watch online or download the full show to your desktop now at www.digitaltheatre.com. Watch this Olivier Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical, directed by Timothy Sheader at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Captured in high definition from multiple angles by Digital Theatre in front of a live audience at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London in October 2010.
- published: 24 Mar 2011
- views: 52817
- author: digitaltheatre
10:00
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 5
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), ...
published: 14 Nov 2009
author: AutumnToSpring
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 5
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
- published: 14 Nov 2009
- views: 1754
- author: AutumnToSpring
4:35
Not A Day Goes By by Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters's version of Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Son...
published: 20 Feb 2008
author: Eric Martin
Not A Day Goes By by Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters's version of Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim live from Royal Festival Hall London. A classic! - I love the glimmer of hope that happens at 3:32.
- published: 20 Feb 2008
- views: 298070
- author: Eric Martin
10:00
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 6
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), ...
published: 14 Nov 2009
author: AutumnToSpring
PASSION Live from Lincoln Center Part 6
Stephen Sondheim's PASSION Live from Lincoln Center, 2005. Starring Patti LuPone (Fosca), Audra McDonald (Clara), Michael Cerveris (Giorgio). Directed by Lonny Price. I do not own anything blah blah blah.
- published: 14 Nov 2009
- views: 2350
- author: AutumnToSpring
photo: AP / Reed Saxon
10 Dec 2012
The wreckage of a small plane believed to be carrying Mexican-American singing superstar Jenni Rivera has been found in northern Mexico and there are no apparent survivors, authorities said. Transportation and Communications Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said on Sunday that "everything points toward" it being the US-registered Learjet 25 carrying Rivera and six other people from Monterrey en route to Toluca, Mexico ... 192 Source. ... Share ... ....(size: 17.5Kb)
photo: USAF / Staff Sgt. Jonathan Lovelady
10 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. In the desert of central Australia still resides a primitive tribe known as the Arunta. This non-technological and stateless group, which mainly depends on hunting and gathering, had suffered several inexplicable deaths ... Therefore, they organized an atinga, or revenge group ... When the guiltless tribe learned of their approach, they sent out a delegation of young women as a token of peace....(size: 5.8Kb)
photo: AP / Todd Williamson
10 Dec 2012
MÉXICO, D.F., diciembre 9 (EL UNIVERSAL).- La Voz México, programa de talentos de Televisa, confirmó la muerte de la cantante Jenni Rivera, a través de su Twitter. "Que toquen fuerte las bandas, suelten por mí mariposas, apláudanme con sus palmas... http.//twitpic.com/bkmhl0 .Descanse en paz Jenni Rivera" ... Además, anunció un homenaje luctuoso dedicado a la cantante ... Descanse en Paz" ... ....(size: 2.1Kb)
photo: AP / A.M. Ahad
11 Dec 2012
Violence has flared in many parts of Bangladesh as schools and most businesses were shut after opposition groups enforced a dawn-to-dusk strike. They called the strike to protest against attacks on their supporters during a road blockade on Sunday. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies have been demanding a caretaker government be put in place to oversee the next parliamentary polls ... "The situation is under control now ... ....(size: 2.2Kb)
photo: AP / Bullit Marquez
11 Dec 2012
The death toll brought about by typhoon “Pablo” continued to rise with 714 persons confirmed dead by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) yesterday while those missing ballooned to 890 as massive search, retrieval and relief operations continue in the typhoon-ravaged areas in Mindanao ... 4 ... They were subsequently brought to Caraga Regional Hospital ... (NHMFC) (P100,000) ... With AFP ....(size: 5.4Kb)
The Hollywood Reporter
11 Dec 2012
share. Getty Images. Bo Bice. The "American Idol" season four runner-up will star in the spring revival of the heartland rock musical, directed by Tony winner John Doyle ... 'Honeymooners' Musical to Hit San Diego with an Eye toward Broadway. 'Hands on a Hardbody' to Touch Down on Broadway ... STORY ... That production, like another Stephen Sondheim musical directed by Doyle, Company, featured a cast that doubled as the orchestra ... Photo Gallery....(size: 4.4Kb)
noodls
11 Dec 2012
(Source. Hofstra University) Media Contact.. Ginny Greenberg. University Relations. 037 Axinn Library. Phone. BOX OFFICE 516-463-6644. Send an E-mail. Date. Dec 11, 2012 ... Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY … The Stephen Sondheim musical Company will be presented by Hofstra University's Gray Wig alumni theater company, January 12-20, 2013, at the Helene Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center, California Avenue, South Campus ... Tickets ... ### ... (noodl....(size: 3.1Kb)
Star Telegram
11 Dec 2012
Special to the Star-Telegram. DALLAS -- It's tough to pull off Grand Guignol-type, Victorian-era horror in a musical. Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd handles it deftly, but in Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde, it comes off as unintentionally campy, or at least it does in the tour that just opened at the AT&T; Performing Arts Center's Winspear Opera House ... Jekyll wants to help and with whom Mr. Hyde becomes dangerously obsessed ... ....(size: 3.6Kb)
Chicago Sun-Times
11 Dec 2012
Updated. December 10, 2012 8.28PM ... Ives has riffed on the work of everyone from Moliere, the 17th century French social satirist, and his contemporary, Pierre Corneille, to that 19th century Austrian writer, Sacher-Masoch (whose name became the source of the term “masochism”) ... He is working on the book for a new musical by Stephen Sondheim ... “I even got her autograph ... He was the first living playwright I’d ever met, and it was fantastic....(size: 4.8Kb)
The Examiner
07 Dec 2012
If everybody's working for the weekend then the weekend should be best spent relaxing, having fun or trying something new. Forget swinging by the bar where everyone knows your name and try one of these exciting adventures on for size ... Light Up Your Night ... Other Hanukkah related events to be hosted at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia includes Light up the Lobby, a tribute to Stephen Sondheim and cosmic bowling for teens. ....(size: 2.4Kb)
The Examiner
06 Dec 2012
Last night, a special concert to announce the Grammy nominations for 2013 was televised. Of special interest to the theater community were the nominations for Best Musical Theater Album. This year’s list includes.. Follies ... Philip Chaffin and Tommy Krasker, producers. Stephen Sondheim, composer/lyricist ... Newsies ... However, Sondheim lovers will not be counted out either ... ....(size: 1.8Kb)
Signon San Diego
06 Dec 2012
Leung adored musicals, even if his parents wanted him to focus on more lucrative pursuits ... Leung, backed by a jazz trio and a string quartet, tackles what at first seems like an odd collection of songs - Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," Stevie Wonder's "Knock Me Off My Feet," Stephen Sondheim's "Children Will Listen," Katy Perry's "Firework" and The Beatles' "In My Life." ... --- ... Were you nervous reworking songs by The Beatles or Sondheim?....(size: 3.9Kb)
IMDb
06 Dec 2012
... might be too old to play Mamma Rose in the anticipated film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ legendary musical Gypsy....(size: 0.7Kb)
Sacramento Bee
06 Dec 2012
Leung adored musicals, even if his parents wanted him to focus on more lucrative pursuits ... Leung, backed by a jazz trio and a string quartet, tackles what at first seems like an odd collection of songs - Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," Stevie Wonder's "Knock Me Off My Feet," Stephen Sondheim's "Children Will Listen," Katy Perry's "Firework" and The Beatles' "In My Life." ... --- ... Were you nervous reworking songs by The Beatles or Sondheim?....(size: 4.6Kb)
Seattle Post
06 Dec 2012
Leung adored musicals, even if his parents wanted him to focus on more lucrative pursuits ... Leung, backed by a jazz trio and a string quartet, tackles what at first seems like an odd collection of songs — Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," Stevie Wonder's "Knock Me Off My Feet," Stephen Sondheim's "Children Will Listen," Katy Perry's "Firework" and The Beatles' "In My Life." ... ___ ... Were you nervous reworking songs by The Beatles or Sondheim?....(size: 4.7Kb)
Star Tribune
06 Dec 2012
"She was singing right to me ... Leung, backed by a jazz trio and a string quartet, tackles what at first seems like an odd collection of songs — Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," Stevie Wonder's "Knock Me Off My Feet," Stephen Sondheim's "Children Will Listen," Katy Perry's "Firework" and The Beatles' "In My Life." ... ___ ... Were you nervous reworking songs by The Beatles or Sondheim?....(size: 5.1Kb)
The Washington Times
06 Dec 2012
Leung, backed by a jazz trio and a string quartet, tackles what at first seems like an odd collection of songs _ Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” Stevie Wonder’s “Knock Me Off My Feet,” Stephen Sondheim’s “Children Will Listen,” Katy Perry’s “Firework” and The Beatles’ “In My Life.”....(size: 6.6Kb)
The Washington Post
06 Dec 2012
Leung, backed by a jazz trio and a string quartet, tackles what at first seems like an odd collection of songs — Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” Stevie Wonder’s “Knock Me Off My Feet,” Stephen Sondheim’s “Children Will Listen,” Katy Perry’s “Firework” and The Beatles’ ”In My Life.”....(size: 5.9Kb)
| Stephen Sondheim | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Stephen Joshua Sondheim |
| Born | (1930-03-22) March 22, 1930 (age 82) New York City, U.S. |
| Genres | Musical theatre |
| Occupations | Composer, lyricist |
| Years active | 1954–present |
Stephen Joshua Sondheim ( /ˈsɒnd.haɪm/) (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre,[1] multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre",[2] his most famous works include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.
Sondheim has also written material for movies, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.
He was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981. In celebration of his 80th birthday, the Henry Miller's Theatre was renamed the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on September 15, 2010, and the The BBC Proms staged a concert in his honor. Cameron Mackintosh has described Sondheim as "possibly the greatest lyricist ever."[3]
Early years[link]
Sondheim was born to a Jewish family in New York City, to Etta Janet "Foxy" (née Fox) and Herbert Sondheim.[4] He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and later, after his parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Herbert was a dress manufacturer and Foxy, his mother, designed the dresses. As an only child of well-to-do parents living in the San Remo on Central Park West, he is described in Meryle Secrest's biography, Stephen Sondheim: A Life, as having had an isolated and emotionally neglected childhood. While living in New York, Sondheim attended the Ethical Culture affiliated Fieldston School. Later, Sondheim attended the New York Military Academy and George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he wrote his first musical ("By George!"). He also spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin.[4] He graduated from George School in 1946.
Sondheim traces his interest in theatre to Very Warm for May, a Broadway musical he saw at age nine. "The curtain went up and revealed a piano," Sondheim recalled. "A butler took a duster and brushed it up, tinkling the keys. I thought that was thrilling."[5]
When Sondheim was ten, his father, a distant figure, abandoned him and his mother. His father sought custody of Stephen, but because he had left Foxy for another woman (Alicia), his efforts failed. Herbert and Alicia had two sons together. In his interview with Meryle Secrest, Sondheim explained that he was “what they call an institutionalized child, meaning one who has no contact with any kind of family. You’re in, though it’s luxurious, you’re in an environment that supplies you with everything but human contact. No brothers and sisters, no parents, and yet plenty to eat, and friends to play with and a warm bed, you know?”
Sondheim famously hated his mother;[6] he once wrote a thank-you note to close friend Mary Rodgers that read, "Dear Mary and Hank, Thanks for the plate, but where was my mother's head? Love, Steve."[5] His mother was allegedly psychologically abusive,[7] projecting anger from her failed marriage onto him.[8] Sondheim said, "When my father left her, she substituted me for him. And she used me the way she used him, to come on to and to berate, beat up on, you see. What she did for five years was treat me like dirt, but come on to me at the same time."[9] At one point, she wrote him a letter saying that the "only regret [she] ever had was giving him birth." [10] When she died in the spring of 1992, he did not attend her funeral.[6][11]
Career[link]
Mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II[link]
At about the age of ten, around the time of his parents' divorce, Sondheim became friends with James Hammerstein, son of the lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. The elder Hammerstein became Sondheim's surrogate father, and had a profound influence on him, especially in developing a love for musical theatre. It was at the opening of South Pacific, the musical Hammerstein wrote with Richard Rodgers, that Sondheim met Harold Prince, who would later direct many of Sondheim's shows. While at George School, Sondheim wrote a comic musical based on the goings-on of his school, entitled By George. It was a major success among his peers, and it considerably buoyed the young songwriter's ego; he took it to Hammerstein, and asked him to evaluate it as though he had no knowledge of its author. Hammerstein said it was the worst thing he had ever seen. "But if you want to know why it's terrible," Hammerstein offered, "I'll tell you." The rest of the day was spent going over the musical, and Sondheim would later say that "in that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime."[12]
Thus began one of the most famous apprenticeships in the musical theatre, as Hammerstein designed a kind of course for Sondheim on the construction of a musical. This training primarily involved having Sondheim write four musicals, each with one of the following preconditions:
- Based on a play he admired (which became All That Glitters);
- Based on a play he liked but thought was flawed, choosing the Maxwell Anderson play High Tor;
- Based on an existing novel or short story not previously dramatized (which became his unfinished Mary Poppins entitled Bad Tuesday,[13] not connected to the musical film and stage play scored by the Sherman Brothers);
- An original (which became Climb High).
None of these "assignment" musicals was ever produced professionally. High Tor and Mary Poppins have never been produced at all; the rights holder for the original High Tor refused permission and his musical Mary Poppins was not finished.[14]
In 1950, Sondheim graduated magna cum laude from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. His first teacher at Williams was Robert Barrow, and according to Sondheim
...everybody hated him because he was very dry, and I thought he was wonderful because he was very dry. And Barrow made me realize that all my romantic views of art were nonsense. I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear 'dah-dah-dah-DUM.' Never occurred to me that art was something worked out. And suddenly it was skies opening up. As soon as you find out what a leading tone is, you think, Oh my God. What a diatonic scale is—Oh my God! The logic of it. And, of course, what that meant to me was: Well, I can do that. Because you just don't know. You think it's a talent, you think you're born with this thing. What I've found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It's just that some people get it developed and some don't.[15]
He went on to study composition with the composer Milton Babbitt. Sondheim told biographer Meryle Secrest, "I just wanted to study composition, theory, and harmony without the attendant musicology that comes in graduate school. But I knew I wanted to write for the theatre, so I wanted someone who did not disdain theatre music. Milton, who was a frustrated show composer, was a perfect combination."[16] Babbitt and Sondheim were both fascinated with mathematics and together they studied songs by various composers, especially Jerome Kern. Sondheim told Secrest that Kern had the ability "to develop a single motif through tiny variations into a long and never boring line and his maximum development of the minimum of material." Sondheim then said of Babbitt, "I am his maverick, his one student who went into the popular arts with all his serious artillery."[16]
Sondheim says that when he asked Babbitt if he could study atonality, Babbitt replied "You haven’t exhausted tonal resources for yourself yet, so I’m not going to teach you atonal."[17] Sondheim agreed, and despite frequent dissonance and a highly chromatic style, his music remains resolutely tonal.
Broadway lyricist[link]
"A few painful years of struggle" followed for Sondheim, during which he continually auditioned songs, living in his father's dining room to save money; he also spent time in Hollywood writing for the television series Topper.[5] He devoured 1940s and '50s films and has called cinema his "basic language."[6] (His film knowledge got him through The $64,000 Question contestant tryouts.) Sondheim has expressed his dislike of movie musicals, favoring classic dramas like Citizen Kane, The Grapes of Wrath, and A Matter of Life and Death. He adds that "studio directors like Michael Curtiz and Raoul Walsh ... were heroes of mine. They went from movie to movie to movie, and every third movie was good and every fifth movie was great. There wasn't any cultural pressure to make art."[18]
In 1954, Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics for Saturday Night, which was never produced on Broadway and was shelved until a 1997 production at London's Bridewell Theatre. In 1998 Saturday Night received a professional recording, followed by a revised version with two new songs and an Off-Broadway run at Second Stage Theatre in 2000 and a full British premiere with the new songs in 2009 at London's Jermyn Street Theatre.[19] "I don't have any emotional reaction to 'Saturday Night' at all -- except fondness," Sondheim says. "It's not bad stuff for a 23-year-old. There are some things that embarrass me so much in the lyrics -- the missed accents, the obvious jokes. But I decided, Leave it. It's my baby pictures. You don't touch up a baby picture -- you're a baby!"[6]
Sondheim's big break came when he wrote the lyrics to West Side Story, lyricizing Leonard Bernstein's music and Arthur Laurents's book. When he was 25, Sondheim was introduced to Bernstein, who had heard Saturday Night and quickly hired him to write the lyrics to West Side Story.[20] The 1957 show, directed by Jerome Robbins, ran for 732 performances. While this may be one of the best-known shows Sondheim ever worked on, he has expressed dissatisfaction with his lyrics, stating they do not always fit the characters and are sometimes too consciously poetic. It has been rumored that while Bernstein was off trying to fix the musical Candide, Sondheim wrote some of the music for West Side Story, and that Bernstein’s co-lyricist billing credit mysteriously disappeared from the credits of West Side Story during the tryout, presumably as a trade-off.[21] Sondheim himself insisted that Bernstein told the producers to list Sondheim as the sole lyricist.
In 1959, he wrote the lyrics for the musical, Gypsy. Sondheim would have liked to write the music as well, but Ethel Merman, the star, insisted on a composer with a track record. Thus, Jule Styne was hired.[22] Sondheim questioned if he should write only the lyrics for another show, but Hammerstein told him writing for a star would be valuable experience. Sondheim worked closely with book writer Arthur Laurents to create the show. It ran 702 performances.
Eventually Sondheim wrote both the music and lyrics, for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It opened in 1962 and ran 964 performances. The book, based on the farces of Plautus, was written by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. Sondheim's score was not especially well received at the time. Even though the show won several Tony Awards, including best musical, Sondheim did not even receive a nomination. In addition, some critics felt the songs were not properly integrated into the farcical action.
At this point, Sondheim had participated in three straight hits. His next show ended the streak. Anyone Can Whistle (1964) was a 9-performance flop, although it introduced Angela Lansbury to musical theatre and has developed a cult following.
In 1965 he wrote the lyrics only for Do I Hear a Waltz?, with music by Richard Rodgers. He has said that this is the one project he has regretted.[6] In 1966, he semi-anonymously provided the lyric for "The Boy From...", a parody of "The Girl from Ipanema", a highlight of the off-Broadway revue The Mad Show. (The official songwriting credit went to the linguistically minded pseudonym "Esteban Rio Nido", which translates from the Spanish to "Stephen River Nest". In the show's playbill, the lyrics are credited to "Nom De Plume".)
After completing Evening Primrose, Jerome Robbins had tried to convince Sondheim to adapt Bertolt Brecht's The Measures Taken, but Sondheim admitted that he did not like the play and did not like a lot of his work. Robbins wanted to adapt another Brecht play The Exception and the Rule and called John Guare to adapt the book. Bernstein had not written for the stage in a while, and his contract conducting the New York Philharmonic was ending. Sondheim was invited to Robbins' house, who unbeknownst to him, was trying to be convinced to write the lyrics to a musical adaption of The Exception and the Rule. Guare was asked to convince Sondheim to do the lyrics. According to Robbins, if Sondheim didn't do it, Bernstein wouldn't do it. After Guare told him about the show, Sondheim agreed to do it. Guare asked, "Why haven't you all worked together since 'West Side Story'?" to which Sondheim replied, "You'll see". Guare recalled a moment when Robbins had put him in a house Robbins had rented for Gold and Fizdale, and he put Guare in a locked room, saying he could not come out until he was finished. Any finished papers were slid under the door. Guare said working with Sondheim was like being with an old college roommate, they just talked and talked. Guare heavily depended on Sondheim to help him "decode and decipher their crazy way of working." Guare said that Bernstein only worked after midnight and Robbins only worked in the bright and early morning. Guare also commented that Bernstein's score, which was supposed to be light, was heavily influenced by Bernstein's feeling he needed to make a major musical statement.[23]
Stuart Ostrow, who had ties with Sondheim with The Girls Upstairs (later titled Follies), agreed to produce the musical, now entitled A Play By Brecht (later titled The Race to Urga). An opening date was set and they were in the middle of auditions when Robbins asked to be excused for a moment. He did not come back and Guare asked where he went and the doorman said he got in a limousine and was headed to Kennedy Airport. This caused Bernstein to burst into tears and said "It's over". Sondheim said of the project, "I was ashamed of the whole project. It was arch and didactic in the worst way."[24] He wrote one and half songs, and threw them both away (the only time he has ever done that). Eighteen years later, Bernstein and Robbins asked Sondheim to retry adapting the show, but Sondheim refused.[23]
Collaborations with Hal Prince (1970–1981)[link]
After the completion of Do I Hear a Waltz, Sondheim has devoted himself to both composing and writing lyrics for a series of varied and adventurous musicals, beginning with the innovative "concept musical" Company in 1970.
Sondheim's work is notable for his use of complex polyphony in the vocal parts, such as the chorus of five minor characters who function as a sort of Greek chorus in 1973's A Little Night Music. He also displays a penchant for angular harmonies and intricate melodies. His musical influences are varied; Sondheim has claimed that he "loves Bach" but his favorite period is Brahms to Stravinsky.[25] To fans, Sondheim's musical sophistication is considered to be greater than that of many of his musical theatre peers, and his lyrics are likewise renowned for their ambiguity, wit, and urbanity.
Sondheim collaborated with producer/director Harold Prince on six musicals between 1970 and 1981. Company (1970) centered on a set of characters and themes rather than a straightforward plot. Follies (1971) was similarly structured, filled with pastiche songs echoing styles of earlier composers. A Little Night Music (1973), a more traditionally plotted show based on the film Smiles of a Summer Night by Ingmar Bergman, was one of his greatest successes. Time magazine called it "Sondheim's most brilliant accomplishment to date."[26] Notably, the score was mostly composed in waltz time (either ¾ time, or multiples thereof.) Further success was accorded to A Little Night Music when "Send in the Clowns" became a hit single for Judy Collins. Although it was Sondheim's only Top 40 hit, his songs are frequently performed and recorded by cabaret artists and theatre singers in their solo careers.
By Bernstein premiered at the off-Broadway Westside Theatre on November 23, 1975 and closed on December 7, 1975. It ran for 40 previews and 17 performances. The lyrics and music were by Leonard Bernstein, with additional lyrics from other lyricists, including Sondheim. It was conceived and written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Norman L. Berman. The production was directed by Michael Bawtree with a cast of Jack Bittner, Margery Cohen, Jim Corti, Ed Dixon, Patricia Elliott, Kurt Peterson, and Janie Sell. The two known songs that had Sondheim contributions are "In There" from the adaption of The Exception and the Rule (which would later be named The Race to Urga) and a cut song from West Side Story "Kids Ain't (Like Everybody Else)".[27]
Pacific Overtures (1976) was the most non-traditional of the Sondheim—Prince collaborations, an intellectual exploration of the westernization of Japan. Sweeney Todd (1979), Sondheim's most operatic score and libretto (which, along with A Little Night Music, has been seen in opera houses), once again explores an unlikely topic, this time murderous revenge and cannibalism. The book, by Hugh Wheeler, is based on Christopher Bond's 1973 stage version of the Victorian original.[28][29][30][31][32]
Merrily We Roll Along (1981), with a book by George Furth, is one of Sondheim's more "traditional" scores and was thought to hold potential to generate some hit songs (Frank Sinatra and Carly Simon each recorded a different song from the show). Sondheim's music director, Paul Gemignani, said, “Part of Steve’s ability is this extraordinary versatility.” Merrily, however, was a 16-performance flop. "Merrily did not succeed, but its score endures thanks to subsequent productions and recordings. According to Martin Gottfried, "Sondheim had set out to write traditional songs... But [despite] that there is nothing ordinary about the music."[33] Sondheim and Furth have extensively revised the show since its initial opening.
In the late nineties, Sondheim reunited with Hal Prince for the musical comedy Wise Guys, a project that took a long time to complete that follows brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner. Though a Broadway production starring Nathan Lane and Victor Garber and directed by Sam Mendes was announced for Spring 2000,[34] the New York debut of the musical was delayed. Rechristened Bounce in 2003, the show was mounted at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.. Bounce received disappointing reviews and never reached Broadway. A revised version of Bounce premiered off-Broadway at The Public Theater under the new name Road Show from October 28, 2008 through December 28, 2008, under the direction of John Doyle.
Collaborations with John Weidman (1976–)[link]
Pacific Overtures (1976) had music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by John Weidman. It opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on January 11, 1976, and closed after 193 performances on June 27, 1976
Assassins (1990) with music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by Weidman. The show opened off-Broadway at the Playwrights Horizons on December 18, 1990, and closed on February 16, 1991 after 73 performances. The idea came from when Sondheim was a panelist at producer Stuart Ostrow's Musical Theater Lab, and he read a script by playwright Charles Gilbert. Sondheim asked Gilbert for permission to use his idea. Gilbert consented and offered to write the book; but Sondheim declined, having already had collaborator John Weidman in mind.[35]
Weidman would also write the book for Road Show, with music and lyrics by Sondheim.
Collaborations with James Lapine (1984–1994)[link]
The failure of Merrily greatly affected Sondheim; he was ready to quit theatre and do movies or create video games or write mysteries. He was later quoted as saying, "I wanted to find something to satisfy myself that does not involve Broadway and dealing with all those people who hate me and hate Hal."[36] The collaboration between Sondheim and Prince would largely end after Merrily – until the 2003 production of Bounce, another failure.
However, instead of quitting the theatre following the failure of Merrily, Sondheim decided "that there are better places to start a show", and found a new collaborator in the "artsy" James Lapine. Lapine has a taste "for the avant-garde and for visually oriented theatre in particular." Their first collaboration was Sunday in the Park with George (1984), in which Sondheim's music evoked the pointillist painting technique of its subject, Georges Seurat. In 1985, he and Lapine won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George. The show had its first revival on Broadway in 2008.
The Sondheim–Lapine collaboration also produced a musical reimagining classic fairy-tales, Into the Woods (1987). Their last work together was the rhapsodic Passion (1994), which was adapted from the Italian film Passione D'Amore by Ettore Scola. After a run of 280 performances, Passion became the shortest-running show to win the Tony Award for Best Musical.[citation needed]
Later work[link]
Regarding his interest in writing new work, Sondheim was quoted in a 2006 Time Out: London interview as saying, "No... It's age. It's a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It’s also an increasing lack of confidence. I’m not the only one. I’ve checked with other people. People expect more of you and you’re aware of it and you shouldn’t be."[37] In December 2007, however, Sondheim said that, along with continued work on Bounce, he was "nibbling at a couple of things with John Weidman and James Lapine."[38]
Lapine created a "multimedia revue", formerly titled Sondheim: a Musical Revue, which had been scheduled to premiere in April 2009 at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia. However, that production was canceled, due to "difficulties encountered by the commercial producers attached to the project...in raising the necessary funds".[39][40] A revised version, Sondheim on Sondheim, was produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company and premiered on Broadway at Studio 54 in a limited engagement from March 19, 2010 in previews, opening April 22 through June 13. The cast featured Barbara Cook, Vanessa L. Williams, Tom Wopat, Norm Lewis and Leslie Kritzer.[41]
Upcoming projects[link]
It was announced in February 2012 that Sondheim will be collaborating on a new musical with David Ives. Sondheim has said that he has "about 20-30 minutes of the musical completed."[42][43][44][45][46] The show is tentatively called All Together Now and is assumed to follow the format of Merrily We Roll Along. Sondheim said of the project, "two people and what goes into their relationship...We’ll write for a couple of months, then have a workshop. It seemed experimental and fresh 20 years ago. I have a feeling it may not be experimental and fresh any more."[47]
Conversation with Frank Rich[link]
On April 28, 2002, during the Sondheim Celebration at the Kennedy Center, Sondheim and Frank Rich of the New York Times held a "conversation".[48][49] In March 2008, Sondheim and Rich appeared in four interviews/conversations in California[50][51][52] and Portland, Oregon[53] titled "A Little Night Conversation with Stephen Sondheim".[54][55] In September 2008, they appeared at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. The Cleveland Jewish News reported on the Oberlin event, writing: "Sondheim said: 'Movies are photographs; the stage is larger than life.' What musicals does Sondheim admire the most? Porgy and Bess tops a list which includes Carousel, She Loves Me, and The Wiz, which he saw six times. Sondheim took a dim view of today’s musicals. What works now, he said, are musicals that are easy to take; audiences don’t want to be challenged."[56][57] Sondheim and Rich had more conversations on January 18, 2009 at Avery Fisher Hall,[58] on February 2, 2009 at the Landmark Theatre, Richmond, Virginia,[59] on February 21, 2009 at the Kimmel Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,[60] and on April 20, 2009 at the University of Akron College of Fine and Applied Arts, EJ Thomas Hall, Akron, Ohio.[61] The conversations were reprised at Tufts and Brown Universities in February 2010 and the University of Tulsa in April 2010.[62] They spoke again at Lafayette College on March 8, 2011.[63]
Sondheim had an additional "conversation with" Sean Patrick Flahaven (associate editor of The Sondheim Review) at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, on February 4, 2009, during which he spoke of many of his songs and shows. "On the perennial struggles of Broadway: 'I don’t see any solution for Broadway's problems except subsidized theatre, as in most civilized countries of the world.'"[64]
On February 1, 2011, Sondheim sat down with The Salt Lake Tribune's former theatre critic Nancy Melich in front of an audience of 1200 at the Kingsbury Hall. Melich said of the night
He was visibly taken by the university choir, who sang two songs during the evening, 'Children Will Listen' and 'Sunday', and then returned to reprise 'Sunday'. During that final moment, Sondheim and I were standing, facing the choir of students from the University of Utah's opera program, our backs to the audience, and I could see tears welling in his eyes as the voices rang out. Then, all of a sudden, he raised his arms and began conducting, urging the student singers to go full out, which they did, the crescendo building, their eyes locked with his, until the final 'on an ordinary Sunday' was sung. It was thrilling, and a perfect conclusion to a remarkable evening—nothing ordinary about it.[65]
Work away from Broadway[link]
Sondheim's career has been varied, encompassing much beyond the composition of musicals.
An avid fan of games, in 1968 and 1969 Sondheim published a series of cryptic crossword puzzles in New York magazine. In 1987, Time referred to his love of puzzlemaking as "legendary in theater circles," adding that the central character in Anthony Shaffer's hit play Sleuth was inspired by Sondheim. (There was a rumor that Sleuth was given the working title Who's Afraid of Stephen Sondheim?, but in a New York Times interview on March 10, 1996, Shaffer denied ever using the title.)[5] Sondheim's love of puzzles and mysteries can also be seen in the intricate "whodunit" he co-wrote with longtime friend Anthony Perkins, The Last of Sheila. This 1973 film, directed by Herbert Ross, starred Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch, James Mason, James Coburn and Richard Benjamin.
He tried his hand at playwriting one more time – in 1996 he collaborated with Company librettist George Furth on a play called Getting Away with Murder. It was not a success, and the Broadway production closed after 29 previews and 17 performances.
His compositional efforts have included a number of film scores, notably a set of songs written for Warren Beatty's 1990 film version of Dick Tracy; one song, "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)" (as performed by Madonna), won Sondheim an Academy Award.
Unfinished or canceled works[link]
Sondheim was asked to translate Mahagonny-Songspiel, although he did not state the time. He said, "But, I'm not a Brecht/Weill fan and that's really all there is to it. I'm an apostate: I like Weill's music when he came to America better than I do his stuff before.... I love The Threepenny Opera but, outside of The Threepenny Opera, the music of his I like is the stuff he wrote in America – when he was not writing with Brecht, when he was writing for Broadway."[66] He was also asked to musicalize Nathanael West's A Cool Million with James Lapine around 1982, but he refused.[67][68]
Sondheim worked with William Goldman on Singing Out Loud, a movie musical, in 1992.[69] Sondheim stated that Goldman wrote one or two drafts of the script and Sondheim wrote six and a half songs, only to have director Rob Reiner lose interest in the project. The songs "Dawn" and "Sand" from the project were recorded for the albums Sondheim at the Movies and Unsung Sondheim.[66] Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein wrote The Race to Urga, scheduled to play at the Lincoln Center in 1969, but when Jerome Robbins left the project, it went unproduced.[70] Sondheim also wrote some new songs for a proposed Into the Woods film, including one entitled Rainbows, which Sondheim said will be in his second book (to be published in October 2011).[dated info] The project never got further than a readthrough.[66]
Sondheim, in 1991, was working with Terrence McNally on a musical entitled All Together Now. McNally said, "Steve was interested in telling the story of a relationship from the present back to the moment when the couple first met. We worked together a while, but we were both involved with so many other projects that this one fell through". The script, with concept notes by McNally and Sondheim, is archived in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The story follows Arden Scott, a 30-something female sculptor, and Daniel Nevin, a slightly younger, sexually charismatic restaurateur.[71]
Books[link]
Sondheim wrote a book of annotations of his lyrics titled Finishing the Hat (2010), a collection of his lyrics "from productions dating 1954–1981. In addition to published and unpublished lyrics from West Side Story, Follies and Company, the tome finds Sondheim discussing his relationship with Oscar Hammerstein II and his collaborations with composers, actors and directors throughout his lengthy career."[72][73] This book, part one of a two part series, is named after a song he wrote for Sunday in the Park With George. Sondheim said "It's going to be long. I'm not, by nature, a prose writer, but I'm literate, and I have a couple of people who are vetting it for me, whom I trust, who are excellent prose writers."[74][75] Finishing the Hat was published in October 2010. The review of the book in The New York Times stated that "The lyrics under consideration here, written during a 27-year period, aren’t presented as fixed and sacred paradigms, carefully removed from tissue paper for our reverent inspection. They’re living, evolving, flawed organisms, still being shaped and poked and talked to by the man who created them."[76] The book was number 11 on The New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction list for November 5, 2010.[77]
The follow-up book, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany was released on November 22, 2011. The book begins with Sunday in the Park With George, where Finishing the Hat stopped, and includes sections on his work in movies and television.[78]
Major works[link]
Unless otherwise noted, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
- Saturday Night (1954, though unproduced until 1997) (book by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein)
- West Side Story (1957) (music by Leonard Bernstein; book by Arthur Laurents; directed by Jerome Robbins)
- Gypsy (1959) (music by Jule Styne; book by Arthur Laurents; directed by Jerome Robbins)
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) (book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart; directed by George Abbott)
- Anyone Can Whistle (1964) (book by Arthur Laurents; directed by Arthur Laurents)
- Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) (music by Richard Rodgers; book by Arthur Laurents; directed by John Dexter)
- Company (1970) (book by George Furth; directed by Hal Prince)
- Follies (1971) (book by James Goldman; directed by Hal Prince)
- A Little Night Music (1973) (book by Hugh Wheeler; directed by Hal Prince)
- Pacific Overtures (1976) (book by John Weidman; directed by Hal Prince)
- Sweeney Todd (1979) (book by Hugh Wheeler; directed by Hal Prince)
- Merrily We Roll Along (1981) (book by George Furth; directed by Hal Prince)
- Sunday in the Park with George (1984) (book by James Lapine; directed by James Lapine)
- Into the Woods (1987) (book by James Lapine; directed by James Lapine)
- Assassins (1990) (book by John Weidman; directed by Jerry Zaks)
- Passion (1994) (book by James Lapine; directed by James Lapine)
- Bounce (2003) (book by John Weidman; directed by Hal Prince); retitled Road Show
- The Frogs – a musical version of Aristophanes' comedy with book by Burt Shevelove (1974). Second version (2004) with revised book by Nathan Lane, contains seven new songs. First performed in the Yale University swimming pool in May 1974.[79]
- Road Show (2008) (book by John Weidman; directed by John Doyle); (formerly titled Bounce, Wise Guys and Gold!)
Revues and anthologies[link]
Side By Side By Sondheim (1976), Marry Me A Little (1980), You're Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983) Putting It Together (1993), and Sondheim on Sondheim (2010) are anthologies or revues of Sondheim's work as composer and lyricist, featuring both songs performed and cut from productions. Jerome Robbins' Broadway features "You Gotta Have a Gimmick" from Gypsy, "Suite of Dances" from West Side Story, and "Comedy Tonight" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. A new revue, Secret Sondheim ... a celebration of his lesser known work, conceived and directed by Tim McArthur, plays the Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in July 2010.[80]
Sondheim's work is also featured in The Madwoman of Central Park West, including the songs "Pretty Women" and "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid".[81]
Minor works[link]
Stage[link]
- I Know My Love (1951), play, Sondheim wrote a Christmas carol for it
- A Mighty Man is He (1955), play, wrote song Rag Me That Mendelssohn March
- Girls of Summer (1956) (incidental music by Sondheim; play by N. Richard Nash)
- Take Five (1957) revue
- Invitation to a March (1960) (incidental music by Sondheim; play by Arthur Laurents)
- The World of Jules Feiffer (1962) (incidental music by Sondheim; sketches by Jules Feiffer)
- Hot Spot (1963) (music mostly by Mary Rodgers; lyrics mostly by Martin Charnin)
- The Mad Show (1966) (music mostly by Mary Rodgers; lyrics mostly by Marshall Barer) wrote the lyric for "The Boy From...", a parody of "The Girl from Ipanema". (Credited as Esteban Rio Nido [a translation of Stephen Sondheim])
- Illya Darling (1967), unused number I Think She Needs Me (music by Manos Hadjidakis and lyrics by Sondheim)
- Twigs (1971), play by George Furth, wrote song Hollywood and Vine (Music by Stephen Sondheim and lyrics by George Furth)
- The Enclave (1973) (incidental music to the play by Arthur Laurents)
- Candide – Second Version (1974) (new lyrics by Sondheim; original lyrics by Richard Wilbur; music by Leonard Bernstein; book by Hugh Wheeler)
- By Bernstein (1975)- music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein, additional lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, John Latouche, Jerry Leiber, and Stephen Sondheim; written and conceived by Comden and Green, with Michael Bawtree, Norman L. Berman and the Chelsea Theatre Center.[82]
- Hey, Love (1993 Off-Broadway),(Music mostly by Mary Rodgers)
- Getting Away with Murder (1996 on Broadway), a "comedy thriller" (non-musical play), co-written with George Furth.[83]
- King Lear (2007), incidental music for a Public Theatre production of the Shakespeare tragedy, composed with orchestrator Michael Starobin. The production was directed by James Lapine and starred Kevin Kline.
Film and TV[link]
- Topper (circa 1953), a non-musical television comedy series for which Sondheim co-wrote eleven episodes.
- Evening Primrose (1966), a made-for-TV musical about a secret society of people living in department stores and the romance between Ella, a department store denizen, and Charles, a poet who decides to live in the department store after renouncing the world. Four songs, including the cabaret standard "Take Me To The World" and the well-loved, if lesser-known, ballad "I Remember".
- A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum (1966), a movie adaptation of the musical. Zero Mostel reprised his role as Pseudolus.
- The Last of Sheila (1973), a nonmusical film mystery written with Anthony Perkins. Perkins and Sondheim received a 1974 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.
- Sondheim appears in the 1974 PBS television version of the play June Moon by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. In the film, Sondheim plays a wise-cracking pianist named Maxie Schwartz.
- "The Madam's Song", also called "I Never Do Anything Twice", for the film The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976).
- The score for Alain Resnais's film Stavisky (1974).
In 1976 Sondheim appeared, together with theatre critic Frank Rich, John Weidman (book for Pacific Overtures) and members of the original cast of Pacific Overtures in a television program titled "Anatomy of a Song." Sondheim plays piano as cast sings the song "Someone in a Tree". Sondheim discusses his working methods, the genesis of the show, and names "Someone in a Tree" his favorite song to date.
- A Little Night Music, (1977) a movie adaptation of the stage work. Several of Sondheim's songs were dropped for the film version. However, he wrote a completely new song entitled "The Glamorous Life" to take the place of the song by the same name from the stage version. Sondheim also wrote new lyrics to "Night Waltz."
- Music for the film Reds starring Warren Beatty (1981), including the song "Goodbye For Now."
- Five songs for Warren Beatty's film Dick Tracy (1990), including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.
- Two songs for the film The Birdcage (1996) "It Takes All Kinds" (not used) and "Little Dream".
- Cameo as himself in the 2003 film Camp.
- Sondheim had a guest part on The Simpsons episode "Yokel Chords" as himself (2007).
- Sweeney Todd, (2007) a movie adaptation of the stage work, made with Sondheim's participation and approval, was directed by Tim Burton, featuring a largely nonmusical cast led by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. All choral numbers were cut to focus more on the primary characters. The movie, in the USA and abroad, grossed over $150 million.
- Follies, allegedly in pre-production is the film of Sondheim's Follies, with a script by Aaron Sorkin.[citation needed] In an interview in 2008, Sondheim said "There is a move afoot to do Follies movie with a well-known director and a well-known star, and I'm not going to tell you who they are."[84]
Honors and awards[link]
- Sondheim at 80
Several benefits and concerts were performed to celebrate Sondheim's 80th birthday in 2010. Among them were the New York Philharmonic's Sondheim: The Birthday Concert, which was held March 15 and 16, 2010 at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall and hosted by David Hyde Pierce. The concert included Sondheim music and songs performed, in some cases, by the original performers. Lonny Price directed, with Paul Gemignani conducting. The performers included: Laura Benanti, Matt Cavenaugh, Michael Cerveris, Victoria Clark, Jenn Colella, Jason Danieley, Alexander Gemignani, Joanna Gleason, Nathan Gunn, George Hearn, Patti LuPone, Marin Mazzie, Audra McDonald, John McMartin, Donna Murphy, Karen Olivo, Laura Osnes, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Bobby Steggert, Elaine Stritch, Jim Walton, Chip Zien, the 2009 Broadway revival cast of West Side Story and a ballet performed by Blaine Hoven and Maria Riccetto set to Stephen Sondheim's score of Warren Beatty's Reds. Jonathan Tunick also made a special appearance to pay tribute to his longtime collaborator.[85][86] The concert was telecast on the PBS "Great Performances" show during November 2010,[87] and the DVD of the performance was released on November 16, 2010.
The Roundabout Theatre Company benefit Sondheim 80 was held on March 22, 2010. The evening included a performance of Sondheim on Sondheim, plus dinner and a show at the New York Sheraton. There was "a very personal star-studded musical tribute" with new songs by contemporary musical theatre writers. The composers, who sang their own songs, included Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, Michael John LaChiusa, Andrew Lippa, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Lin-Manuel Miranda (accompanied by Rita Moreno), Duncan Sheik, and Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire. Bernadette Peters performed a song (unnamed) that was dropped from a Sondheim show.[88][89]
The New York City Center birthday celebration and benefit concert on April 26, 2010 featured (in order of appearance): Michael Cerveris, Alexander Gemignani, Donna Murphy, Debra Monk, Joanna Gleason, Maria Friedman, Mark Jacoby, Len Cariou, B.D. Wong, Claybourne Elder, Alexander Hanson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Raul Esparza, Sutton Foster, Nathan Lane, Michele Pawk, the original cast of Into the Woods; Kim Crosby, Chip Zien, Danielle Ferland, & Ben Wright, Angela Lansbury, and Jim Walton. This concert was directed by John Doyle and co-hosted by Mia Farrow. During the concert, greetings were read. These greetings were written by: Sheila Hancock, Julia McKenzie, Milton Babbitt, Judi Dench, and Glynis Johns. After Catherine Zeta-Jones performed "Send in the Clowns," a recorded greeting from Julie Andrews was played. During her greeting, she sang a little of "Not a Day Goes By." Patti LuPone, Barbara Cook, Bernadette Peters, Tom Aldredge and Victor Garber were originally scheduled to perform, but withdrew from the concert. One of the beneficiaries of the concert was Young Playwrights Inc.[90][91]
On July 31, 2010, a BBC Proms concert was held to celebrate Sondheim's 80th Birthday at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It featured songs from many of his musicals, including a performance of "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music by Judi Dench (reprising her role as Desirée from the 1995 production of that musical), and performances from many other stars of opera, Broadway, stage and screen, including Bryn Terfel and Maria Friedman.[92][93]
On November 19, 2010, The New York Pops performed at Carnegie Hall to celebrate Sondheim's 80th birthday, led by Steven Reineke. Kate Baldwin, Aaron Lazar, Christiane Noll, Paul Betz, Renee Rakelle, Marilyn Maye (singing "I’m Still Here"), and Alexander Gemignani were all on hand to sing songs including "I Remember", "Another Hundred People", "Children Will Listen", and "Getting Married Today". Sondheim made an on-stage appearance during the concert's encore of his song "Old Friends".[94][95]
- Honors
Sondheim has received the following honors:
- Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition (at college graduation, 1950)
- Elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters (1983)
- Kennedy Center Honors, Lifetime Achievement, (1993)
- The Algur H. Meadows Award, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas (November 12, 1994, taped and televised on the A&E television network January 12, 1995)[96]
- Special Award, Olivier Award, 2011, "in recognition of his contribution to London theatre"; the award was presented at the ceremony by Cameron Mackintosh and Angela Lansbury.[97][98]
- UK's Critics' Circle 2011 Award for Distinguished Services to the Arts, March 2012, for "what is effectively a lifetime achievement award", as Mark Shenton (Drama section chairman) commented.[99]
- Awards
He has won these awards:
- Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Sunday in the Park with George (1985)
- Academy Award for Best Song, "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)" from Dick Tracy (1990)
- Company (1970, Best Score from an Original Cast Album)
- A Little Night Music (1973, Best Score from an Original Cast Album)
- "Send in the Clowns" (1975, Song of the Year)
- Sweeney Todd (1979, Best Cast Show Album)
- Sunday in the Park With George (1984, Best Cast Show Album)
- Into the Woods (1988, Best Musical Cast Show Album)
- Passion (1994, Best Musical Cast Show Album)
- West Side Story (2010, Best Musical Cast Show Album)
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1963, Best Musical)
- Company (1971, Best Score, Best Lyrics)
- Follies (1972, Best Score)
- A Little Night Music (1973 Best Score)
- Sweeney Todd (1979, Best Score)
- Into The Woods (1988, Best Score)
- Passion (1994 Best Score)
- Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre (2008)
- Company (1969–70, Best Musical, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics)
- Follies (1970–71, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics)
- A Little Night Music (1972–73, Outstanding Music and Lyrics)
- Sweeney Todd (1978–79, Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics)
- Sunday in the Park with George (1983–84, Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Lyrics)
- Into the Woods (1987–88, Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Lyrics)
- Passion (1993–94, Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics)
- Road Show (2009, Music and Lyrics)
- Sweeney Todd (1980, Best New Musical)
- Follies (1987, Best New Musical)
- Candide (1988, Best New Musical)
- Sunday in the Park with George (1991, Best New Musical)
- Merrily We Roll Along (2001, Best New Musical)
- Society of London Theatre Special Award, Stephen Sondheim (Honorary Award)
Legacy[link]
- Young Playwrights
This organization, founded by Sondheim in 1981, is intended to introduce young people to writing for the theatre. He is the Executive Vice President.[100]
- The Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts
The Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts opened December 7–9, 2007, and is located at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center in Fairfield, Iowa. The Center opened with performances from seven Broadway performers, including Len Cariou, Liz Callaway, and Richard Kind, all of whom had taken part in the musicals of Sondheim.[101][102] The center is the first one in the world named after him, with a Broadway theatre the second.
- The Stephen Sondheim Society
In 1993 the Stephen Sondheim Society was set up to promote and provide information about the works of Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim - the Magazine is the Society magazine devoted to Sondheim's work, and is sent to every member of the Society. The Society aims to create a greater interest and appreciation of them by means of circulating information and providing a focal point where those interested can share such interests. It issues news, provides education, maintains a database of information, organizes productions, meetings, outings, and other events, assists with publicity and promotion, publishes articles, and performs other tasks. It runs a website at www.sondheim.org.
- The Stephen Sondheim Society's Student Performer of the Year Competition
An annual event, the competition gives 12 young musical theatre students from top UK drama schools and universities the opportunity to compete for a prize of £1,000. Per Sondheim's request, a prize is also offered for a new song by a young composer, judged by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. Each contestant performs one Sondheim song and one new song.
- Media
Most of the episode titles from the television series Desperate Housewives reference his work in some way, through the use of either song titles or lyrics.[103][104][105][106] The final episode in the series is titled "Finishing the Hat" (airing May 13, 2012).[107]
- Musical Theatre Development
In 1990, Sondheim took the Cameron Mackintosh chair in musical theatre at Oxford, and in this capacity ran workshops with promising writers of musicals, such as George Stiles, Anthony Drewe, Andrew Peggie, Paul James, Stephen Keeling and others. These writers jointly set up the Mercury Workshop in 1992, which eventually merged with the New Musicals Alliance to become MMD, a UK-based organisation developing new musical theatre, of which Sondheim continues to be patron.
- The Sondheim Award
The Signature Theatre, Arlington, Virginia, established a new award, "The Sondheim Award", "as a tribute to America's most influential contemporary musical theatre composer." The first award was presented at a gala fund-raiser on April 27, 2009, with help from performers Bernadette Peters, Michael Cerveris, Will Gartshore and Eleasha Gamble. Sondheim himself was the first recipient of the award, which also includes a $5000 honorarium for the recipients' choice of a nonprofit organization.[108][109][110] The 2010 honoree was Angela Lansbury, with Peters and Catherine Zeta-Jones as honorary hosts for the Gala Benefit held on April 12, 2010.[111] The 2011 honoree was Bernadette Peters.[112] The 2012 honoree was Patti LuPone.[113]
- The Stephen Sondheim Theatre
A Broadway theatre at West 43rd Street in New York City, The Henry Miller's Theatre, was renamed The Stephen Sondheim Theatre on September 15, 2010, in honor of his 80th birthday. In attendance were Nathan Lane, Patti LuPone, and John Weidman. Sondheim said of the naming, "I'm deeply embarrassed. Thrilled, but deeply embarrassed. I've always hated my last name. It just doesn't sing. I mean, it's not Belasco. And it's not Rodgers and it's not Simon. And it's not Wilson. It just doesn't sing. It sings better than Schoenfeld and Jacobs. But it just doesn't sing." Lane said of the day, "We love our corporate sponsors and we love their money, but there's something sacred about naming a theatre, and there's something about this that is right and just."[114]
- The Sondheim Review
Sondheim is the only living composer to have a quarterly journal published in his name.[citation needed] The Sondheim Review, founded in 1994, exists to chronicle and promote the works of Stephen Sondheim.[115]
Personal life[link]
Sondheim has been described as being extremely introverted and a mostly solitary person. He has stated that he doesn't believe in marriage. He came out as a homosexual in the 1980s and did not live with a partner until he was 61. This was Peter Jones, a dramatist; they lived together for several years, until 1999.[116] In an interview with Frank Rich, Sondheim said that "the outsider feeling – somebody who people want to both kiss and kill – occurred quite early in my life.'"[6]
See also[link]
Notes[link]
- ^ "Tony Awards Legacy Facts and Trivia" tonyawards.com, retrieved March 14, 2010
- ^ Rich, Frank."Conversations With Sondheim" The New York Times , March 12, 2000, Magazine Section 6, p. 38
- ^ Fanshawe, Simon."An iconoclast on Broadway"The Guardian , December 12, 2000
- ^ a b Secrest bookThe New York Times
- ^ a b c d Henry, William A, III (1987-12-07). "Master of the Musical; Stephen Sondheim Applies a Relentless". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,966141,00.html. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
- ^ a b c d e f Rich, Frank (2000-03-12). "Conversations With Sondheim". The New York Times. http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000312mag-sondheim.html. Retrieved 2007-01-17.
- ^ King, Robert A., The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (1972), Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-11996-8, p. 310
- ^ Secrest, p. 30
- ^ Schiff, Stephen (2010). "Deconstructing Sondheim". The Sondheim Review (Sondheim Review, Inc.) XVII (2): 17. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (1994-03-20). "Sondheim's Passionate "Passion"". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/19/specials/sondheim-compassion.html. Retrieved 2012-04-07.
- ^ Secrest, p 272, "Sondheim was in London when his mother died and did not return for her funeral."
- ^ Zadan, Craig, Sondheim & Co., New York: Harper & Row, 1974 & 1986 p. 4 ISBN 0-06-015649-X
- ^ "Sondheim's Saturday Night at the Jermyn Street Theatre – MusicalCriticism.com (Musical Theatre review)". MusicalCriticism.com. http://www.musicalcriticism.com/opera/saturday-night-0209.shtml. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Secrest, pp. 78–79
- ^ Schiff, Stephen (2010). "Deconstructing Sondheim". The Sondheim Review (Sondheim Review, Inc.) XVII (2): 16. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ a b "An early influence". The Sondheim Review (Sondheim Review, Inc.) XVII (4): 6. 2011. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ Horowitz, Mark Eden, Sondheim on Music, New York: Scarecrow Press, 2003, p. 117, ISBN 978-0-8108-4437-7, ISBN 0-8108-4437-0
- ^ Mitchell, Elvis (2003-08-28). "Sondheim, Film Aficionado; Choices for Telluride Festival Show Nonmusical Side". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D04EEDC1139F93BA1575BC0A9659C8B63. Retrieved 2008-03-28.
- ^ "Sondheim's Saturday Night to Play London's Jermyn Street Theatre in 2009". Playbill. http://www.playbill.com/news/article/119611-Sondheims-Saturday-Night-to-Play-Londons-Jermyn-Street-Theatre-in-2009. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Schiff, Stephen (2010). "Deconstructing Sondheim". The Sondheim Review (Sondheim Review, Inc.) XVII (2): 18. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ Suskin, Steven (1990). Opening Night on Broadway: A Critical Quotebook of the Golden Era of the Musical Theatre. New York: Schirmer Books. p. 697. ISBN 0-02-872625-1.
- ^ Zadan, p.38
- ^ a b Secrest, Meryle."Chapter 10:Being Alive" Stephen Sondheim: A Life (1998, 2011), (books.google.com), Vintage Books, ISBN 978-0-307-94684-3, pp.188-189
- ^ Abernathy, June."Sondheim's Lost Musical" sondheim.com, accessed February 5, 2012
- ^ interview on Sunday Arts, ABC (Australia) TV August 5, 2007 An Audience With Stephen Sondheim2007 ABC Australia TV interview downloadable ("Episode 26")
- ^ "A Precious Fancy". Time. 1973-03-19. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,906953,00.html. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
- ^ "Sondheim Guide / Other Stage Work". Sondheimguide.com. http://www.sondheimguide.com/other.html. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Berkvist, Robert. "Stephen Sondheim Takes a Stab at Grand Guignol". New York Times, February 25, 1979
- ^ "'Sweeney Todd'". Sondheim.com, retrieved March 22, 2010
- ^ Wheeler, Hugh; Sondheim, Stephen. "Sweeney Todd script, Introduction by Christopher Bond". Hal Leonard Corporation, 1991, ISBN 1-55783-066-5, p. 1
- ^ "'Sweeney Todd' listing" "Based on a Version of "Sweeney Todd" by Christopher Bond". Sondheimguide.com, retrieved March 22, 2010
- ^ Brown, Larry. "'Sweeney Todd' Notes". Larryavisbrown.homestead.com, retrieved March 22, 2010
- ^ Gottfried, Martin (photos By Martha Swope), Sondheim, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993, pgs. 146–147 ISBN 978-0-8109-3844-1 ISBN 0-8109-3844-8
- ^ Bahr, David (1999-10-12). "Everything's coming up Sondheim". The Advocate. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_1999_Oct_12/ai_55983616. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
- ^ Michael Cerveris (2008). "Story of Assassins". Amazing Journey. http://www.amazing-journey.com/assassins_story.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
- ^ in Gottfried, Sondheim, p.153
- ^ 2006 Sondheim feature. Timeout.com London
- ^ 2007 Interview: Stephen Sondheim for "Sweeney Todd". DarkHorizons.com
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Liz Callaway Cast in World Premiere of iSondheim: a Musical Revue". Playbill.com, February 4, 2009
- ^ Gans, Andrew and Hetrick, Adam. "Atlanta's Alliance Theatre Cancels Sondheim Revue; Brel Will Play Instead". Playbill.com, February 26, 2009
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Sondheim on Sondheim, a New Musical Reflection of a Life in Art, Begins on Broadway". Playbill.com, March 19, 2010
- ^ "Powerhouse Scribes Stephen Sondheim & David Ives at Work on New Musical" BroadwayWorld.com, February 29, 2012
- ^ Kepler, Adam W. and Healy, Patrick. "Rolling Along: Sondheim Discloses He’s Working on a New Show" The New York Times (artsbeat.blogs), February 29, 2012
- ^ Wappler, Margaret. "Stephen Sondheim has '20 or 30 minutes' written of a new musical" Los Angeles Times (blogs), February 2012
- ^ "BWW Exclusive: Stephen Sondheim Drops Hint About New Musical with David Ives!" BroadwayWorld.com, February 29, 2012
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Stephen Sondheim Collaborating With David Ives on New Musical" Playbill.com, February 29, 2012
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim Reveals New Details on David Ives Collaboration" BroadwayWorld.com, March 5, 2012
- ^ "Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration". Kennedy-center.org. http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/newseason/sondheim/. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Sondheim Guide listing for Kennedy Center Celebration, 2002". Sondheimguide.com. http://www.sondheimguide.com/concerts3.html#Kennedy. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Student Affairs Information Systems, webmaster@sa.ucsb.edu. "UCSB listing". Artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu. https://artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu/Details.aspx?PerfNum=889. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "UCLA listing". Magazine.ucla.edu. http://www.magazine.ucla.edu/depts/happenings/stephen-sondheim/. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "Rich schedule". Frankrich.com. http://www.frankrich.com/schedule.htm. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Portland listing[dead link]
- ^ by A. M. Homes. "''Vanity Fair'' article about the talks, March 2008". Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/03/ontheroad200803. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "''Santa Barbara Independent'', Interview with Sondheim about the talks, March 6, 2008". Independent.com. March 6, 2008. http://www.independent.com/news/2008/mar/06/stephen-sondheim-and-frank-rich-stage-em-little-ni/. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Oberlin listing[dead link]
- ^ Heller, Fran. "Sondheim scores a hit at Oberlin College". Cleveland Jewish News, October 10, 2008
- ^ Gans, Andrew. "Sondheim and Rich Will Discuss A Life in the Theater in January 2009". Playbill.com, November 11, 2008
- ^ "An Evening with Stephen Sondheim listing". Modlin Center for the Arts, accessed November 16, 2008
- ^ "An Evening with Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich listing. Phillyfunguide.com, accessed November 16, 2008
- ^ "Stephen Sondheim with Frank Rich listing", ejthomashall.com, accessed November 16, 2008
- ^ "Sondheim conversation set for TU". Tulsa World. April 18, 2010. http://www.tulsaworld.com/scene/article.aspx?subjectid=272&articleid=20100418_272_D4_Thefre754390. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ "A Life in the Theater: Broadway Legend Stephen Sondheim Visits Campus · About · Lafayette College". Lafayette.edu. March 9, 2011. http://www.lafayette.edu/about/news/2011/03/09/a-life-in-the-theater-broadway-legend-stephen-sondheim-visits-campus/. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Maupin, Elizabeth. "Sondheim talks. And talks. And talks." Orlandosentinel.com, February 5, 2009
- ^ "More from Sondheim". The Sondheim Review (Sondheim Review, Inc.) XVII (4): 6. 2011. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ a b c Cerasaro, Pat."Stephen Sondheim Talks Past Present Future" broadwayworld.com, November 3, 2010
- ^ Bixby, Suzanne (2008). "Jumping In". The Sondheim Review (Sondheim Review, Inc.) XVI (4): 28. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ Isenberg, Barbara."Meet Mr. Plucky : To James Lapine, directing his new play 'Luck, Pluck & Virtue' means booting Horatio Alger smack dab into the '90s" LA Times, August 1, 1993
- ^ "'Singing Out Loud' listing" sondheimguide.com, accessed August 4, 2011
- ^ Long, Robert. "Broadway, The Golden Years: Jerome Robbins And The Great Choreographer-Directors: 1940 To The Present" (2003). Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1462-1, pp 133–134
- ^ Frontain, Raymond-Jean (2011). "Mutual admiration". The Sondheim Review (Sondheim Review, Inc.) XVII (3): 30–33. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ Hetrick, Adam."Stephen Sondheim and James Earl Jones Set for TimesTalks This Fall" playbill.com, August 16, 2010
- ^ Table of Contents randomhouse.com
- ^ Haun, Harry."Exclusive! Sondheim Explains Evolution from Bounce to Road Show". Playbill.com, August 12, 2008
- ^ Gardner, Elysa. "Sondheim sounds off about writing songs". USA oday, October 9, 2008
- ^ Brantley, Ben."Sondheim’s Rhymes and Reasons". The New York Times, October 21, 2010
- ^ Hardcover Nonfiction listThe New York Times, November 5, 2010
- ^ Jones, Kenneth."Stephen Sondheim's "Look, I Made a Hat," Part Two of His Career in Lyrics, in Stores Nov. 22" playbill.com, November 22, 2011
- ^ "'The Frogs', 1974 Yale University Production" sondheimguide.com, retrieved April 28, 2010
- ^ Gans, Andrew."London's Jermyn Street Theatre to Offer Secret Sondheim with Cutko, Armstrong and McArthur" playbill.com, May 27, 2010
- ^ "'The Madwoman Of Central Park West' cast album list" castalbumcollector.com, retrieved May 14, 2010
- ^ "'By Bernstein'" sondheimguide.com, accessed August 8, 2011
- ^ "'Getting Away With Murder' Listing" sondheimguide.com, accessed March 27, 2011
- ^ "Sondheim Reveals 'Follies' Is Headed To Film", BroadwayWorld, May 6, 2008, accessed December 28, 2011
- ^ Gans, Andrew. "Benanti, Gleason, Pierce, Stritch, Walton, Zien Join Philharmonic Sondheim Celebration". Playbill.com, January 8, 2010
- ^ Ross, Blake. "About Last Night: The Stars on Sondheim". Playbill, March 16, 2010
- ^ Hetrick, Adam."Starry Sondheim: The Birthday Concert Airs on "Great Performances" Nov. 24". Playbill, November 24, 2010
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Everybody Rise! Roundabout's Sondheim 80 Celebrates a Master's Milestone". Playbill.com, March 22, 2010
- ^ Ross, Blake."About Last Night: Inside Sondheim’s Birthday". Playbill.com, retrieved March 23, 2010
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Lansbury, Zeta-Jones, Lane, Cariou, Gleason, Zien Sing Sondheim at City Center April 26". Playbill.com, April 26, 2010
- ^ Gardner, Elysa."Broadway stars salute Stephen Sondheim"USA Today, April 27, 2010
- ^ BBC Proms Programme bbc.co.uk, accessed August 1, 2010
- ^ Staff."Judi Dench Sings 'Send in the Clowns' for Sondheim's 80th" broadwayworld.com, July 31, 2010
- ^ Rafter Keddy, Genevieve."Photo Coverage: The New York Pops Celebrate Stephen Sondheim's 80th Birthday" broadwayworld.com, November 21, 2010
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Sondheim at Carnegie Hall" playbill.com, November 21, 2010
- ^ "Television and Radio listings sondheimguide.com, retrieved June 10, 2010
- ^ Stephen Sondheim to receive special Olivier Award" bbc.co.uk, March 4, 2011
- ^ Bennett, Ray.Olivier Awards 2011: 'Legally Blonde,' Stephen Sondheim Dominate" HollywoodReporter.com, March 13, 2011
- ^ Gans,Andrew. Stephen Sondheim Receives UK Critics' Circle 2011 Award for Distinguished Services to the Arts" Playbill.com, March 9, 2012
- ^ "Young Playwrights site". Youngplaywrights.org. http://www.youngplaywrights.org/. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Near Cornfields Worthy of Hammerstein, a Theatre Named for Sondheim Rises in Midwest". Playbill.com, May 31, 2007
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Original Cast Members Fete Sondheim at New Midwest Arts Center Dec. 7–9". Playbill.com, December 4, 2007
- ^ Hetrick, Adam. "Tomlin to Join Fifth Season of 'Desperate Housewives'". Playbill.com, September 12, 2008
- ^ Episode list, "Desperate Housewives" IMDB
- ^ Widdicombe, Ben. Gossip, Daily News (New York), March 23, 2005, p. 22; "Desperate Housewives" writer Marc Cherry, who congratulated Sondheim in a filmed statement, admitted the composer was such an inspiration that each episode of his blockbuster show is named after a Sondheim song."
- ^ Chang, Justin. Variety, "Sondheim, Streisand infuse Wisteria Lane", December 20–26, 2004, p. 8; "Broadway-literate fans may have noticed the skein's first three post-pilot episodes... are all named after classic Stephen Sondheim showtunes...."
- ^ Sperling, Daniel. "'Desperate Housewives' final episode title revealed" digitalspy.com, April 19, 2012
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Signature Creates Sondheim Award, to Be Presented at April 2009 Gala". Playbill.com, October 6, 2008
- ^ Horwitz, Jane. "Backstage" column Washington Post, October 8, 2008
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. Peters and Cerveris Celebrate Sondheim at DC Sondheim Award Gala April 27". Playbill.com, April 27, 2009
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Garber, Mazzie, Danieley and More Celebrate Lansbury in DC Gala April 12" Playbill.com, April 12, 2010
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Bernadette Peters Gets Sondheim Award April 11; Stephen Buntrock, Rebecca Luker, Euan Morton Sing". Playbill.com, April 11, 2011
- ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Laura Benanti, Howard McGillin and More Sing the Praises of Patti LuPone in DC Sondheim Award Gala April 16" Playbill.com, April 16, 2012
- ^ "It might not sing, but it's right and just". The Sondheim Review (Sondheim Review, Inc.) XVII (3): 4. 2011. ISSN 1076-450X.
- ^ The Sondheim Review] www.sondheimreview.com, 2012. Accessed May 31, 2012.
- ^ Franks, Alan. "Stephen Sondheim: 'My ideal collaborator is me'". Times Online, April 25, 2009
References[link]
- Gottfried, Martin. Sondheim (1993), New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., ISBN 0-8109-3844-8
- Secrest, Meryle. Stephen Sondheim: A Life (1998), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0-679-44817-9
- Zadan, Craig. Sondheim & Co (1986, 2nd ed.), New York: Harper & Row, ISBN 0-06-015649-X
Further reading[link]
- Guernsey, Otis L. (Editor). Broadway Song and Story: Playwrights/Lyricists/Composers Discuss Their Hits (1986), Dodd Mead, ISBN 0-396-08753-1
External links[link]
- The Stephen Sondheim Society Web site of The Stephen Sondheim Society
- The Quotable Stephen Sondheim Page
- Stephen Sondheim | PlaybillVault.com
- Stephen Sondheim at the Internet Broadway Database
- Stephen Sondheim at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Stephen Sondheim at the Internet Movie Database
- MusicalTalk Podcast featuring interview with Sondheim, Depp, Burton, Rickman, Carter and others.
- MusicalTalk Podcast discussing the concert production of Sweeney Todd held at the Royal Festival Hall in the summer of 2007 in London. This episode features Emma Williams who along with being a MusicalTalk presenter, also starred as Johanna for this concert.
- MusicalTalk Podcast with an in depth introduction to the work of Stephen Sondheim
- Stephen Sondheim online-with Finishing The Chat
- The Stephen Sondheim Reference Guide Comprehensive listings of productions and recordings information
- James Lipton (Spring 1997). "Stephen Sondheim, The Art of the Musical". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1283/the-art-of-the-musical-stephen-sondheim.
- Fresh Air NPR radio interview with Sondheim from 2000 (20 minutes, streaming audio)
- Kennedy Center interview with Sondheim, conducted by Frank Rich in 2002 (90 minutes, streaming video)
- Stephen Sondheim Center for Performing Arts
- MMD – developing new musical theatre with Sondheim as patron
- Stephen Sondheim "The Story So Far" podcast series produced by Sony BMG Masterworks
- News article "Sondheim 'Story So Far' available 9/30, including previously unreleased tracks", BroadwayWorld.com
- Review "Sondheim has more story to tell" USA Today, 10/8/08
- Stephen Sondeim: Alumni of Distinction – New York Military Academy archives page
- Stephen Sondheim symposium held at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2005
- BroadwayWorld.com interview with Stephen Sondheim, December 20, 2007
- Review of "Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981)" November 2010
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Harold Prince |
Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre 2008 |
Succeeded by Jerry Herman |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Sondheim, Stephen |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | March 22, 1930 |
| Place of birth | New York City, U.S. |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
