I just landed at JFK, and the first blast out of the phone was the death of the great Stephen Sondheim, age 91. Shattering. All my life his songs and scores have been casting spells — wonderful, mesmerizing, heart-melting poetry…complex, urbane, delicate and sophisticated. And just before the opening of Steven Spielberg’s screen version of West Side Story, which Sondheim (along with Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins) co-created 64 or 65 years ago. I’m very, very sorry. Then again 91 years, and many of them rhapsodic or historic or at least ebullient.
“Stephen Sondheim: The Last Word,” N.Y. Times. 11.26.
