( 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.

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.

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.

" 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.

Sondheim questioned if he should write only the lyrics for another show, but Hammerstein told him writing for a star would be valuable experience.

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 )".

Weidman would also write the book for Road Show, with music and lyrics by Sondheim.

" The collaboration between Sondheim and Prince would largely end after Merrily – until the 2003 production of Bounce, another failure.

Megan McCarthy confirmed that Amy Rogers, who wrote those songs, is a huge Sondheim fan and would actually record her own scratch track on the piano for the songs.

Laurents asked Sondheim if he would be interested in tackling the task.

Sondheim converted long passages of dialogue, and sometimes just a simple phrase like " A boy like that would kill your brother ", into lyrics.

Weidman had written the book for Pacific Overtures and would work with Sondheim again on Road Show.

In August 2003, Stephen Sondheim responded to a question about his next project that he was interested in something like a theme and variations — possibly a musical adaptation of Groundhog Day ; however, in a 2008 live chat said that " to make a musical of Groundhog Day would be to gild the lily.

During the post-show Q & A session, one of the members of The Stephen Sondheim Society asked Mr. Sondheim if he would now allow the show to be performed publicly.

The same themes and characterisations would resurface some 70 years later in the Broadway show A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Stephen Sondheim.

Sometimes referred to as the Liebeslieder Singers although Sondheim and Wheeler did not script them to have that title, using Quintet instead.

" I don't have any emotional reaction to ' Saturday Night ' at all – except fondness ," Sondheim says.

" Sondheim and Furth have extensively revised the show since its initial opening.

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.

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.

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.

Sondheim is the only living composer to have a quarterly journal published in his name.

: Stephen Sondheim ’ s puzzles for New York Magazine have been collected in book form.

Although a handful of songs from the musical have appeared in revues and on Sondheim compilation albums, the score as a whole went unperformed until 1997.

When asked his reaction to seeing Saturday Night performed in New York after 40 years, Sondheim replied, " I don't have any emotional reaction to Saturday Night at all — except fondness.

Celebrity residents since have included actors Katharine Hepburn, June Havoc, Ricardo Montalban and Tyrone Power, writer-director Garson Kanin, composer Stephen Sondheim, jurist Learned Hand, conductor Leopold Stokowski, editor Maxwell Perkins, publisher Henry Luce, journalists Dorothy Thompson and E. B.

Past productions have also included four Pulitzer Prize winners: Doug Wright ’ s I Am My Own Wife, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George, Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy and Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles.

In his review of Sondheim's Follies, he wrote " ' Follies ' " is intermissionless and exhausting, an extravaganza that becomes tedious for two simple reasons: Its extravagances have nothing to do with its pebble of a plot ; and the plot, which could be wrapped up in approximately two songs, dawdles through 22 before it declares itself done ... Mr. Sondheim may be too much a man of the seventies, too present-tense sophisticated ... The effort to bind it up inhibits the crackling, open-ended, restlessly varied surges of sound he devised with such distinction for " Company '.

Its musical productions have included Grand Hotel and the Stephen Sondheim works, Pacific Overtures, Merrily We Roll Along, Company, Into the Woods and the 1992 production of Assassins that opened Sam Mendes ' tenure as Artistic Director.

Again, the invitation to serve as guest director is very prestigious, evidenced by the renown of those who have accepted the post ; these include Errol Morris, Peter Bogdanovich, Bertrand Tavernier, Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Peter Sellars, Stephen Sondheim, Buck Henry, and Michael Ondaatje.

Over the years, Westport Country Playhouse apprentices have included composer / lyricist Stephen Sondheim, screenwriter Frank Perry, television host Sally Jesse Raphael, composer Mary Rodgers, actor Cary Elwes, and actress Tammy Grimes.

Ben Brantley, reviewing for the New York Times, wrote: " About halfway into its intermissionless 90 minutes, Little Fish starts to lose its shapely, sharp-edged contours and turn into a sentimental, well, blob ... Mr. LaChiusa ... and Ms. Daniele have done a swell job of fashioning a lively musical about what it means to feel lifeless in contemporary Manhattan ... Like many American musical composers under 50, Mr. LaChiusa is an artistic descendant of Mr. Sondheim, and in many ways Little Fish can be regarded as a direct, latter-day answer to Company.

Other productions have included Guys and Dolls, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum ( 2001 ) by Stephen Sondheim, Taxi-Cabaret ( 2002 ), Jesus Christ Superstar, Love, Sex and Everything in Between ( a revue done in fall, 2002 ), A Chorus Line ( 2003 ), Little Shop of Horrors ( 2003 ) by Alan Menken, That's Entertainment ( a revue done in fall, 2003 ), The Last Five Years ( By Jason Robert Brown ) ( 2004 ), Pippin ( 2004 ) ( By Stephen Schwartz ), You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown ( 2004 ) and the first summer show A Summer Revue produced in 2004.

This training primarily involved having Sondheim write four musicals, each with one of the following preconditions:

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.

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.

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

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

The failure of Merrily greatly affected Sondheim ; he was ready to quit theatre and do movies or create video games or write mysteries.

However, Suskin states in Show Tunes that " As the writing progressed and the extent of Bernstein's lyric contributions became less, the composer agreed to rescind his credit ... Contrary to rumor, Sondheim did not write music for the show ; his only contribution came on " Something's Coming ", where he developed the main strain of the chorus from music Bernstein wrote for the verse.

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

By the time the project began to jell, however, Hammerstein had died, and Stephen Sondheim was asked by Laurents and Mary Rodgers, Richard Rodgers ' daughter, to write the lyrics.

A few years later, when he was invited by Hal Prince to write the score for a film remake starring Angela Lansbury as a fading musical comedienne rather than a silent film star, Sondheim declined, citing his conversation with Wilder.