On April 28, 2002, during the Sondheim Celebration at the Kennedy Center, Sondheim and Frank Rich of the New York Times held a " conversation ".

In March 2008, Sondheim and Rich appeared in four interviews / conversations in California and Portland, Oregon titled " A Little Night Conversation with Stephen Sondheim ".

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.

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.

In an interview, Peters said that Sondheim had " proposed the idea to her this spring and urged the producers of the revival to cast her.

Most biographers blame Lerner's professional decline on the lack of a strong director with whom Lerner could collaborate, as Neil Simon did with Mike Nichols or Stephen Sondheim with Harold Prince ( Moss Hart, who had directed My Fair Lady, died shortly after Camelot opened ).

( 1965 ), for which he had written the lyrics to Richard Rodgers's music, Sondheim decided that he would henceforth work only on projects where he could write both the music and lyrics himself.

These plans also did not work out, and finally Harold Prince, who had worked previously with Sondheim, became the producer and director.

He had agreed to work on The Girls Upstairs if Sondheim would agree to work on Company ; Michael Bennett, the young choreographer of Company, was also brought onto the project.

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.

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.

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.

At this point, Sondheim had participated in three straight hits.

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.

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 ).

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 )".

According to Martin Gottfried, " Sondheim had set out to write traditional songs ...

Pacific Overtures ( 1976 ) had music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by John Weidman.

Gilbert consented and offered to write the book ; but Sondheim declined, having already had collaborator John Weidman in mind.

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.

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.

* Sondheim had a guest part on The Simpsons episode " Yokel Chords " as himself ( 2007 ).

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.

According to Sondheim, " Glynis had a lovely, crystal voice, but sustaining notes was not her thing.

In New York, Laurents went to the opening night party for a new play by Ugo Betti, and there he met Sondheim, who had heard that East Side Story, now retitled West Side Story, was back on track.

Gilbert consented and offered to write the book ; but Sondheim declined, having already had collaborator John Weidman in mind.

Sondheim discovered that Laurents hated doing backers ' auditions and he took over that responsibility, playing and singing more than 30.

But if Pacific Overtures is never going to be anyone's favorite Sondheim musical, it is a far more forceful and enjoyable evening at the Promenade than it was eight years ago at the Winter Garden ... Many of the songs are brilliant, self-contained playlets.

" 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.

Stephen Sondheim has won more Tony Awards than any other composer, with eight.

Among his more notable former students are music theorists David Lewin and John Rahn, composers Donald Martino, Laura Karpman, Tobias Picker, Paul Lansky, and John Melby, the theatre composer Stephen Sondheim, and the jazz guitarist and composer Stanley Jordan.

The Tower of Bray is also referenced in the song Parlour Songs in the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd, although the song has been removed from more recent performances of that musical.

Though the music was more accessible than their earlier material, the lyrics and subject matter remained characteristically oblique and suggestive ( McAloon has often cited Stephen Sondheim as an influence ).

Cant's theatre credits include Still Playing Away, The Railway Children, Present Laughter, An Ideal Husband, Habeas Corpus, Gaslight, Side by Side by Sondheim, The Canterbury Tales ( in which he memorably ad-libbed a reference to his work on Play School ), Oh Coward, There's No Place Like a Home and many more, as well as thirty two pantomimes, including an adaptation of " Aladdin " at the Wolverhampton Grand written by Ian Billings.

" Parody " in this serious sense continues to be a term in musicological use, existing alongside the more common use of the term to refer to parody for humorous effect by composers from Bach to Sondheim and performers from Spike Jones to " Weird Al " Yankovic.

history, and Stephen Sondheim was present at the post-matinee talkback on April 10.

* Anyone Can Whistle on the Stephen Sondheim Reference Guide

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart.

* ' A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Sondheim Guide

" Bernadette Peters quoted Sondheim on the character of " Sally ": " He said early on that is off balance, to put it mildly.

In 1983 he performed on the demo of the Stephen Sondheim – James Lapine production Sunday in the Park with George, starring Mandy Patinkin.

20th century musicals based on Plautus include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum ( Stephen Sondheim ).

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.

While at George School, Sondheim wrote a comic musical based on the goings-on of his school, entitled By George.

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.

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.

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.

Sondheim would have liked to write the music as well, but Ethel Merman, the star, insisted on a composer with a track record.

Eventually Sondheim wrote both the music and lyrics for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Guare heavily depended on Sondheim to help him " decode and decipher their crazy way of working.

Sondheim collaborated with producer / director Harold Prince on six musicals between 1970 and 1981.

" 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.

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.