The tributes continue apace, as many of us in the theater community turn to the written word (ours and Sondheim’s) to express our feelings of losing an important artist, mentor, and fellow theater lover. As numerous as his artistic accomplishments are, his personal ones are just as large. Laura Collins-Hughes underscored that point in today’s New York Times. “As a mentor, as a letter writer, as an audience member who showed up far beyond Broadway to witness new work,” she wrote, “he quietly, faithfully nurtured generations of theater makers.”
Having been mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, Sondheim paid it forward in programs like Young Playwrights Inc. and the Dramatists Guild’s Jonathan Larson Fellowship. In 1997, I joined the Guild as coordinator of its fellowship and as editor of its magazine, The Dramatist. Sondheim encouraged not only the fellows but also me. When the magazine published an interview with him, Sondheim called me to praise my editing — and to ask me to work with him on a new book he was writing, which became Finishing the Hat. Another affirmation from Sondheim was the recommendation letter that I took with me when I left the Guild in 2007.
A highlight of my performing career was singing for Sondheim at the March 19, 2005, celebration of his 75th birthday at Symphony Space. (In the photo at left, I’m the one directly above Barbara Cook’s head.) With the Juilliard Choral Union, I sang a medley of “Merrily We Roll Along” and “The Hills of Tomorrow” (from Merrily We Roll Along), accompanied by Jason Robert Brown on piano, and “Sunday” (from Sunday in the Park with George), conducted by Paul Gemignani, which you can hear below from the CD Wall to Wall Stephen Sondheim.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, one of the numerous writers whom Sondheim mentored, led a Broadway community group sing of “Sunday” this past weekend on the red steps of the TKTS booth in Times Square, which you can watch below. As the Dramatists Guild wrote in their tribute to Sondheim, “His memory and work are already a blessing. May his life be an example to us all.”