Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim - Biography Stephen Sondheim was born on 22 March 1930, the son of a wealthy New York dress manufacturer. But, when his parents divorced, his mother moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania and young Stephen found himself in the right place at the right time. A neighbour of his mother's, Oscar Hammerstein II, was working on a new musical called Oklahoma! and it didn't take long for the adolescent boy to realise that he, too, was …

…his most affecting, straightforward music, reaching back beyond Berlin to barbershop and Stephen Foster, and almost to our own time with an ironic parody of the Carpenters. Not everyone feels comfortable watching Lee Harvey Oswald singing along with John Wilkes Booth, but, in stretching the possibilities of the musical, Sondheim is seeking to prove that the form has just as wide a range as the straight play. And for that we should all be grateful.