Legendary composer Stephen Sondheim passed last week.I have been lucky over the past ten years to invite the casts of several wonderful Sondheim productions into the studio. In addition to fabulous songs and singing, the conversation is always lively where the genius of Sondheim is concerned. Here are some of the memoirs Stephen Sondheim and I have shared:
Theater Latte Da’s Company was given new resonance in 2012 with cellphones and the Minnesota Marriage Amendment.
Theater Latte Da’s Assassins is a historical revue about guns and power that sadly needed no updating in 2018.
A 2015 musical of favorites and rarities from Skylark Opera, Putting it Together.
Two productions of Sunday in the Park with George with terrific voices from Bloomington Civic Theater and the Guthrie Theater.
Greta Oglesby’s fabulous performance of the witch in the 2015 production of Theater Latte Da’s Into the Woods.
Sally Wingert and Mark Benninghofen’s deeply affecting 2019 “Send in the Clowns” from Theater Latte Da’s A Little Night Music.
And no fewer than three productions of Sweeney Todd, from the Broadway tour of John Doyle’s landmark 2008 Broadway production, to Theater Latte Da in 2015 , to a 2016 alfresco fright amid the ruins of Mill City Opera.
During a 2010 Q&A evening with Sondheim in Minneapolis, I had a memorable evening at a pre-show reception, where I got to shake the hand of the master himself. I also heard the story of how Leonard Bernstein once “hung him out to dry” by insisting that Sondheim could conduct!
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This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment‘s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.
