Stephen Sondheim – Composer, songwriter Born March 22, 1930; died November 26, 2021 When news broke about Stephen Sondheim’s death aged 91 late last Friday night, my immediate response was to play Tom Waits’ version of Somewhere. A key number from West Side Story (1957), Sondheim’s breakout Broadway show as a lyricist, Somewhere is an emotive hymn to outsiderdom. The song’s teenage protagonists Tony and Maria are determined to rise above the hand-me-down prejudices of their blue-collar backgrounds to build something better. Somewhere was penned by 26-year-old Sondheim with composer Leonard Bernstein for a book by Arthur Laurents. Two decades after West Side Story premiered, Waits invested Sondheim’s words with an after hours stumblebum melancholy, transcending its source to become a sliver of hope to hold on to in a world of broken dreams. West Side Story first filtered into my consciousness by way of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ multiple Oscar winning1961 film version starri
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.