Wall-to-wall Stephen Sondheim

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Sondheim Collage

Wow, this sounds like fun...a three hour concert celebrating the songs of Stephen Sondheim (he just turned 75). It was particularly interesting to read that several episodes of Desperate Housewivesare named after Stephen Sondheim tunes, the result of Desperate Housewives exec producer Marc Cherry's love of Sondheim. That's cool!


Here's the article fromBroadwayWorld.com:
There's not a tune you can hum, not a tune you go bum-bum-bum-di-dum? Have people actually said such a thing about Stephen Sondheim's musicals?!

If it were true, how on earth could Symphony Space have put together the three-hour concert that closed out Saturday's Wall to Wall Sondheim, a 12-hour spree of performances, reminiscences and panel discussions held in honor of the composer's 75th birthday. Yes, the Sondheim zealots -- some of whom waited in the cold all day to get in -- were plotzing at a succession of performances by Angela Lansbury, George Hearn and other Sondheim vets. But even if you had just stumbled in from under the proverbial rock, you would have had to been entranced by the sheer loveliness of the music. As arranged by the likes of Jonathan Tunick and Jason Robert Brown, as sung by everyone from the Juilliard Choral Union to Patti LuPone, and as played by an orchestra under the direction of the tireless Paul Gemignani, almost every song in the concert sounded so...melodic...tuneful...so pretty. (Y'know, all those things Sondheim has been accused of not being.) Has any opera company ever delivered a multi-voice euphony as divine as Wall to Wall's "A Weekend in the Country"?
By Suzy Conn on March 24, 2005 5:33 AM | | Comments (0)


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