Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway legend, has died at 91

Stephen Sondheim, the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning Broadway songwriter has died at age 91. His death occurred early this morning, according to Aaron Meier at DKC O&M, the producers of Company on Broadway.

Sondheim would have been the first to tell you he was a Broadway baby. As a teenager, he learned about theatrical songwriting from a master – Oscar Hammerstein, the author of Showboat and Oklahoma!, among others – and, by the time Sondheim was twenty seven, he had his first show, West Side Story, on Broadway.

Even though he only wrote lyrics to Leonard Bernstein’s music for West Side Story, it was the beginning of a remarkable career in which Sondheim – as lyricist and composer – elevated what was, essentially, a lighthearted, optimistic commercial entertainment into an art form.