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Please consider purchasing books and music via the Society's Amazon Associate links below, as proceeds from these sales go towards supporting our charity efforts.
Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes
Hardback
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - Titled after perhaps Stephen Sondheim's most autobiographical song, from Sunday in the Park with George--Finishing the Hat not only collects his lyrics for the first time, it offers readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions.
Stephen Sondheim's career spanned more than half a century; his lyrics are synonymous with musical theater and popular culture. Sondheim--the winner of seven Tonys, an Academy Award, seven Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize and more--treats us to never-before-published songs from each show, songs that were cut or discarded before seeing the light of day, along with the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981, including West Side Story, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd.
Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany
Hardback
The second volume of Sondheim's collected lyrics is both a remarkable glimpse into the brilliant mind of a legend, and a continuation of the acclaimed and best-selling Finishing the Hat. Picking up where he left off in Finishing the Hat, Sondheim gives us all the lyrics, along with excluded songs and early drafts, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins and Passion. Here, too, is an in-depth look at the evolution of Wise Guys, which subsequently was transformed into Bounce and eventually became Road Show. Sondheim takes us through his contributions to both television and film, some of which may surprise you, and covers plenty of never-before-seen material from unproduced projects as well.
Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions, The Less Is More Edition
Paperback
In this collection of interviews conducted by Mark Horowitz of the Library of Congress, musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim discusses the art of musical composition, lyric writing, the collaborative process of musical theater, and how he thinks about his own work. A postlude features a more recent conversation with Sondheim.
Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy
Hardback
Lively, sophisticated, and filled with first-person tributes and glorious images, Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy lifts the curtain on a Broadway legend-a man who stood at the pinnacle of the American musical theatre for more than sixty years. Brimming with insights from a veritable Who's Who of Broadway Babies and complemented by more than two hundred colour and black-and-white images, Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy offers a witty, multidimensional look at the musical genius behind Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, and the landmark West Side Story and Gypsy.
Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim
Hardback
An intimate portrait of a genius: the late Stephen Sondheim in a series of illuminating and deeply personal interviews from the last years of his life--conversations that show the composer-lyricist as he has likely never been seen before.
In 2017, New Yorker staff writer D.T. Max began working on a major profile of Stephen Sondheim that would be timed to the eventual premiere of a new musical Sondheim was writing. Sadly, that process - and the years of conversation - was cut short by Sondheim's own hesitations, then the global pandemic, and finally by the great artist's death in November 2021.
The Oxford Book of Sondheim Studies
Paperback
The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies offers a series of cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling topics in the growing field of Sondheim Studies. Focusing on broad groups of issues relating to the music and the production of Sondheim works, rather than on biographical questions about the composer himself, the handbook represents a cross-disciplinary introduction to comprehending Sondheim in musicological, theatrical, and socio-cultural terms.
The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia
Hardback
The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is the first reference volume devoted to the works of this prolific composer and lyricist. The encyclopedia s entries provide readers with detailed information about Sondheim's work and key figures in his career, including his apprenticeship with Oscar Hammerstein II, his early work with Leonard Bernstein, and his work on television.
Entries include all of his major works and key songs from such musicals as Assassins, Company, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Gypsy, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, and West Side Story. Additional entries focus on his key collaborators, from lyricists to directors.
Stephen Sondheim: A Life
Hardback
A full-scale portrait of the distinguished composer-lyricist draws on personal interviews with Sondheim to describe his troubled childhood, early struggles, rise to the pinnacle of Broadway musical theater, collaboration with Hal Prince, and original theatrical works.
Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical
Paperback
The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is the first reference volume devoted to the works of this prolific composer and lyricist. The encyclopedia s entries provide readers with detailed information about Sondheim's work and key figures in his career, including his apprenticeship with Oscar Hammerstein II, his early work with Leonard Bernstein, and his work on television.
Entries include all of his major works and key songs from such musicals as Assassins, Company, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Gypsy, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, and West Side Story. Additional entries focus on his key collaborators, from lyricists to directors.
Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George"
Hardback
Putting It Together chronicles the two-year odyssey of creating the iconic Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George. In 1982, James Lapine, at the beginning of his career as a playwright and director, met Stephen Sondheim, nineteen years his senior and already a legendary Broadway composer and lyricist. Shortly thereafter, the two decided to write a musical inspired by Georges Seurat's nineteenth-century painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Through conversations between Lapine and Sondheim, as well as most of the production team, and with a treasure trove of personal photographs, sketches, script notes, and sheet music, the two Broadway icons lift the curtain on their beloved musical. Putting It Together is a deeply personal remembrance of their collaboration and friendship and the highs and lows of that journey, one that resulted in the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning classic.
Sondheim & Me: Revealing a Musical Genius
Hardback
For yen years, they exchanged notes, letters, faxes, and phone calls. Stephen Sondheim would contact him, and Paul Salsini, the founder and editor of The Sondheim Review, would respond. And vice versa.
Now, Salsini, a Milwaukee journalist, has described his unlikely long-distance relationship with the fabled composer/lyricist in Sondheim & Me: Revealing a Musical Genius. The memoir includes the dozens of notes that Sondheim sent Salsini about articles in the magazine. It was clear that, at least at the start in 1994, he read every word of every issue, and often his comments were what Sondheim called "emendations," pointing out a typo, a wrong first name or a misreading of a scene.
There were a few disagreements; Sondheim was furious about the magazine's review of one of his shows and called to loudly complain. After the magazine published his lyrics for a high school show, he wrote to "object vigorously to your reprinting my juvenilia."
But mostly there was a good working relationship, and Sondheim's responses were encouraging and sometimes enthusiastic. "Congratulations on another good issue!" "Keep up the good work!" Sondheim & Me also includes numerous reports of talks, forums, and Q&As in which Sondheim revealed his process for composing, his inspirations, his comments on his shows (the original film of West Side Story "isn't any good," the first act of Sunday in the Park with George "is a stunt," the film of A Little Night Music is "dreadful").
Art Isn't Easy: The Theater Of Stephen Sondheim
Paperback
The musical theatre of Stephen Sondheim probes deeply into the most disturbing issues of contemporary life. By challenging his audience with intricate music, biting wit, and profound themes, he flouts the traditional wisdom of the musical theatre. Tracing Sondheim's career from his initial success as lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy to his most recent work - Into the Woods and Assassins - Joanne Gordon emphasizes not only the disturbing content of Sondheim's work, but his innovative use of form. In shows such as A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park with George, Sondheim's music and lyrics are inextricably woven into the fabric of the entire work.
Sondheim
Hardback
This volume tells the complete story of Sondheim's remarkable career - from his earliest days under the wing of Oscar Hammerstein II, through his latest controversial musical, Assassins. In between is Sondheim's brilliant but largely unheralded work as a lyric writer for Leonard Bernstein (in West Side Story) and Jule Styne (in Gypsy), his first experience writing both music and lyrics (for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and the legendary collaborations with producer Harold Prince. Author Martin Gottfried's narrative overview of Sondheim's life and his analysis of the music and lyrics are enhanced by numerous quotations from the composer/lyricist himself.
On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide
Hardback
In On Sondheim, renowned author Ethan Mordden takes the reader on a tour of Stephen Sondheim's work, arguing for the importance and appeal of the composer-lyricist in American theater and, even more, in American culture. Over the course of eighteen shows, Mordden demonstrates that Sondheim is a classical composer who happens to write musicals. Sondheim has intellectualized the musical by tackling serious content usually reserved for the spoken stage: nonconformism (in Anyone Can Whistle, 1964), history (in Pacific Overtures, 1976), and cannibalism as a metaphor for class warfare (Sweeney Todd, 1979). Yet his work combines complex music and intellectual plots with a masterly skill for the fabric of theatre. His shows are all intensely theatrical, produced with flair and brilliance, whether in the lush operetta of A Little Night Music (1973) or the quixotic fairy-tale magic of Into the Woods (1987).
Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Collection of Critical Essays
Hardback
Stephen Sondheim is arguably the most important writer for the American musical stage today, the equivalent in his field of Miller, Albee, O'Neill, and Williams. Yet he has rarely been treated seriously within the academy. Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Collection of Critical Essays is an attempt to remedy that situation. Bringing together scholars and critics from a wide variety of literary and theoretical perspectives, this book undertakes to examine all of Sondheim's major productions and themes.
He Never Did Anything Twice: Deconstructing Stephen Sondheim
Hardback
Get ready for a mind-blowing trip through the Broadway musicals of the most fearless and influential artist in the history of the American musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim.
Enjoy this eye-opening journey through sixteen Sondheim musicals, in-depth explorations of West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Anyone Can Whistle, Evening Primrose, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, The Frogs, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, and Passion; plus some brief stops at some of his other musical and non-musical projects over the years.
Join musical theatre director, writer, scholar, and fanboy Scott Miller for his tenth collection of fascinating, insightful, deep dives into amazing Broadway musicals. See how these ground-breaking shows were created, what makes them tick, what we can learn from them, how Sondheim’s work and the art form changed over his career, and so much more.
Listening for America – Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim
Hardback
Few people in recent memory have dedicated themselves as devotedly to the story of twentieth- century American music as Rob Kapilow, the composer, conductor, and host of the hit NPR music radio program, What Makes It Great? Now, in Listening for America, he turns his keen ear to the Great American Songbook, bringing many of our favorite classics to life through the songs and stories of eight of the twentieth century's most treasured American composers-Kern, Porter, Gershwin, Arlen, Berlin, Rodgers, Bernstein, and Sondheim. Hardly confi ning himself to celebrating what makes these catchy melodies so unforgettable, Kapilow delves deeply into how issues of race, immigration, sexuality, and appropriation intertwine in masterpieces like Show Boat and West Side Story. A book not just about musical theater but about America itself, Listening for America is equally for the devotee, the singer, the music student, or for anyone intrigued by how popular music has shaped the larger culture, and promises to be the ideal gift book for years to come.
Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies
Paperback
In 1971, Ted Chapin was a production assistant on the legendary Broadway musical Follies. Thirty years later, the journal he kept has become the definitive history of one of Broadway's greatest-ever musicals, created by geniuses at the top of their free: Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, and James Goldman. Everything Was Possible takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride, from the uncertainties of casting to drama-filled rehearsals, and from the pressures of a Boston dry run to the triumph of opening night on Broadway.
"Surely the best book about the making of a musical. A must for Sondheim fans - and indeed anyone interested in theatre and the art, agony and ecstasy of putting it together." - Craig Glenday, Chair, The Stephen Sondheim Society
Lord Knows, At Least I Was There: Working with Stephen Sondheim
Hardback
When the Atlanta-born Paul Ford first fell in love with the American musical theatre at the age of five, after seeing the movie version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, he never imagined that his future skills as a "piano thumper" would lead him to a career on Broadway playing rehearsals or in the "pit" for such classic Stephen Sondheim musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Follies in Concert, Into the Woods, Assassins (both off-Broadway and the Broadway revival), Passion, the 2005 production of Pacific Overtures, Wiseguys, Stephen Sondheim at Carnegie Hall, and numerous concerts, birthday tributes, and television spectaculars. In two of his Tony award acceptance speeches, Sondheim publicly declared Paul Ford the "indefatigable master of the musical theatre" and "the world's most tireless rehearsal pianist and a walking memory bank of every song that has ever been written for any musical on any continent."
For more than 25 years, Paul Ford was also Mandy Patinkin's exclusive accompanist and musical collaborator on a series of recordings and live concerts that took the duo from Broadway to London to Australia and beyond. Patinkin offers a heartfelt tribute to his former associate in the book's Foreword.
Sondheim & Co.
Paperback
Sondheim & Co. is as original as one of Sondheim's own lyrics. Craig Zadan has recreated the entire history of how Sondheim (in company with his distinguished colleagues) has formed a new kind of musical theatre. Cover over thirty years of theatre history, this the fully authorized, behind-the-scenes accoutn of the creation of West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Anyone Can Whistle, Do I Hear a Waltz?, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. Much of the book is in the principals' own words from interviews with such luminaries as Angela Lansbury, Zero Mostel, Anthony Perkins, Carol Burnett, Lee Remick, Barbara Cook, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Beverly Sills, Harold Prince, Arthir Laurents, Leonard Bernstein amd Sondeim himself.
