Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died at the age of 91 on November 26, is being memorialized in a number of ways.
View of American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (1930 – 2021) on stage during an event in … [+]
On November 28, performers gathered at Duffy Square in Manhattan’s theater district to sing “Sunday” from Sondheim’s celebrated musical, Sunday in the Park with George. Participants included Lin-Manuel Miranda, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Sara Bareilles, Raúl Esparza, Stephen Schwartz, Laura Benanti, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Josh Groban, Erich Bergen, Lonny Price, Jim Walton, Tom Kitt, Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, Marc Shaiman, Lauren Patten, Kathryn Gallagher, Abby Mueller, Judy Kuhn, Brandon Uranowitz, Adam Chanler-Berat, Tavi Gevinson, Erin Davie and Bryan Clark Tyrell, among others. The event was co-presented by the Broadway League, the Times Square Alliance and Playbill.
In his six-decade career on Broadway, Sondheim earned eight Tony Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement honor in 2008; eight Grammy Awards; one Academy Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
Through January 15, 2022, the Town Hall in New York is presenting, for free, an online conversation with Tony Award-winning playwright and director James Lapine and Sondheim, originally aired last summer to celebrate the release of Lapine’s book, Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created “Sunday in the Park with George.”
Joining Lapine and Sondheim were the stars of the original 1984 Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical: Mandy Patinkin, who portrayed Georges Seurat, and Bernadette Peters, who portrayed his lover, Dot, and his mother, Marie. Actress Christine Baranski, who was in the original 1983 off-Broadway production of the musical at Playwrights Horizons, moderated the discussion.
Earlier this month Yellow Sound Label released volume one of the three-volume Sondheim Unplugged: The NYC Sessions in streaming and digital formats, and a two-disc CD.
Sondheim Unplugged: The NYC Sessions ultimately will encompass 70 singers and 120 songs; the second volume will be released on what would have been Sondheim’s 92nd birthday, March 22, 2022, and the third on June 1, 2022. Vocalists performing on the recording collectively boast over 100 Broadway credits; several actually originated roles in Sondheim musicals, including Annie Golden (Assassins), Danielle Ferland (Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George), and Teri Ralston (Company, A Little Night Music).
Hosted by series creator Phil Geoffrey Bond, Sondheim Unplugged has been celebrated monthly in New York since 2010 at Feinstein’s/54 Below; it also has been seen in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and in the Hippodrome and Live at Zedel in London.