Stephen Sondheim, a well-known Broadway composer, has died.
The New York Times originally reported that Sondheim died at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on Friday, according to his friend F. Richard Pappas. Pappas stated in his announcement that the composer had spent Thanksgiving with friends the day before his death.
Sondheim was regarded as one of Broadway’s top composers.
His work included the lyrics for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy.” His catalog included “Company,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Into The Woods.” His most famous ballad, “Send in the Clowns,” has been recorded hundreds of times, including by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins.
Sondheim’s work was rewarded with Tony Awards and even a Pulitzer Prize. He received the Kennedy Center Honors for Lifetime Achievement in 1993, and Barack Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
“As a composer and a lyricist, and a genre unto himself, Sondheim challenges his audiences,” Obama said at the time. “His greatest hits aren’t tunes you can hum; they’re reflections on roads we didn’t take, and wishes gone wrong, relationships so frayed and fractured there’s nothing left to do but ‘Send in the Clowns.’ Yet Stephen’s music is so beautiful, his lyrics so precise, that even as he exposes the imperfections of everyday life, he transcends them. We transcend them.”
“Put simply, Stephen reinvented the American musical. He’s loomed large over more than six decades in the theatre. And with revivals from Broadway to the big screen, he is still here, ‘pulling us up short, and giving us support for being alive.'”
Tributes quickly flooded social media as performers and writers alike saluted a giant of the theater. “We shall be singing your songs forever,” wrote Lea Salonga. Aaron Tveit wrote: “We are so lucky to have what you’ve given the world.”
“The theater has lost one of its greatest geniuses and the world has lost one of its greatest and most original writers. Sadly, there is now a giant in the sky. But the brilliance of Stephen Sondheim will still be here as his legendary songs and shows will be performed for evermore,” producer Cameron Mackintosh wrote in tribute.