Will Stephen Sondheim Ever Win The EGOT? Jan 20
2024, 10:36:28 PM
It's not out of the question. Along with The Last of Sheila, he and Anthony Perkins wrote treatments/scripts for two additional murder mysteries, The Chorus Girl Murder Case (a musical) and Crime and Variations. According to an interview with Sondheim from the 90s, the latter is/was owned by HBO.
http://www.sondheim.com/features/stephen_sondheim.html
I'm not sure how complete either script is. There's been a lot of interest in Sondheim since his death and an increase in popularity in whodunnits and murder mysteries (Knives Out, Branagh's Poirot, etc). You'd think there would be some interest in producing them for TV or film.
|
Steven Spielberg's WEST SIDE STORY - News & Discussion Thread Dec 7
2021, 10:52:08 PM
Lovely photo of Rachel Zegler with Broadway's original Maria, Carol Lawrence, at the LA premiere.
https://twitter.com/MarkHarrisNYC/status/1468419171448987648?t=br7LVdSy1M1u8z-bYXPAbg&s=19
|
Anyone Can Whistle Question? May 16
2020, 12:44:01 AM
Sondheim talks about this song a little in his book of lyrics. Basically it was meant to be an 11 o'clock number towards the end of the show during the Cookie Chase. This was the only time the two female leads were in the same scene. Fay was also disguised as Cora at this point in the show, so the women looked the identical. It was funny, but not funny enough. Or as Sondheim says "It wasn't even a ten thirty number, more like a ten fifteen." So it was yanked.
|
Jay's ANYONE CAN WHISTLE recording is May 6
2020, 04:03:17 PM
Another song released. This time it's "A Parade in Town". Jay Records says they are "starting to compile design materials for packaging", so fingers crossed we finally get a release.
https://soundcloud.com/jayrecords/theres-a-parade-new
|
Songs That Sound Exactly the Same Apr 14
2020, 07:30:59 PM
This may not exactly answer the question, but there are times when I hear a composer add a new song to a previous work that sounds out of place, sometimes because it sounds like whatever show they were writing at the time. Sondheim's "Country House" from the '87 London production of Follies sounds straight out of Into the Woods, at least musically, to me. Similarly, "Something Just Broke" sounds like it belongs in Passion and not Assassins.
|
Broadway Break Up Songs? Feb 10
2020, 01:04:39 AM
"Thank You So Much" from Do I Hear a Waltz? is a sweet little heartbreaker. Always been fond of the line "Thank you so much for something between ridiculous and sublime."
|
Sondheim NY Philharmonic Concert Jan 1
2020, 02:38:04 AM
Caught the first half and recorded the rest. Superb orchestral suite of Assassins by Michael Starobin. A couple of the others were Don Sebesky's arrangements from the Symphonic Sondheim album. Bernadette Peters introduced each piece and noted at the beginning the focus of the concert was on Sondheim's music rather than music and lyrics. Thus the lack of vocal performances, except for Katrina Lenk's.
|
Anais Mitchell blames the patriarchy for people wanting perfect rhymes in theatre songs. Seriously. Dec 10
2019, 02:06:37 AM
Sondheim believes perfect rhymes to be important in writing musical theatre lyrics because of their ability to help audiences understand what's being sung to them. Hearing "weather" at the end of a line anticipates a word such as "together". A word like "forever", however, is not quite the same sound, and consequently, there may be a delay in the listener's comprehension of the lyric. This is not such an issue with popular music as the listener can playba
|
Differences in "Sondheim On Music" editions? Jun 17
2019, 12:39:30 AM
I had rented the previous version from the library years ago and purchased the "Less Is More" edition about a month ago. The only new additions are an introduction by Horowitz (discussing how and when the interviews occurred, explanations for why he covered what he did, etc) and a short "Postlude" interview Horowitz did with Sondheim at one of Anthony de Mare's Liaisons concerts in 2013. It is only a few pages and talks about classical influences and the like. Nothing really about his shows. The
|
Songs That Sound An Awful Lot Like Other Songs Jun 14
2019, 02:01:51 AM
Just remembered how similar "The Five-Fifteen" from Grey Gardens is to Cole Porter's "The Leader of a Big-Time Band" from Something For the Boys.
|
Songs That Sound An Awful Lot Like Other Songs Mar 21
2019, 03:07:00 PM
Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown's "Make 'Em Laugh" from Singin' in the Rain is straight plagiarised from Porter's "Be a Clown". Also, Jerry Herman's "It Takes a Woman" and "We Need a Little Christmas" have pretty similar melodies.
|
Documentary Now's "Original Cast Album: CO-OP" Episode Feb 27
2019, 11:50:24 PM
I loved it. Great attention to detail and lovingly made. If only it were as long as the original though. I was hoping for a spoof of the scene where Sondheim explains how he got to Broadway but also glad the "Bubbi" moment got parodied.
|
Company London Feb 1
2019, 03:27:43 PM
I love a lot of the changes. One line I'd quibble with though:
Original:
Today is for Amy
Amy, I give you the rest of my life
To cherish and to keep you
To honor you forever
Today is for Amy
My, happily, soon-to-be wife
Updated:
Today is for Jamie
Jamie, I give you the rest of my days
To cherish and to keep you
To honor you forever
|
Sondheim and the Nobel Prize Oct 13
2016, 06:03:38 PM
Today's announcement that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature seems to have opened the field in terms of recipients. If other lyricists are to be considered, I think Sondheim would be an obvious candidate. Should he be awarded it?
|
