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Broadway Sings in Times Square to Honor Stephen Sondheim
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Oct 26, 2022
As BroadwayWorld sadly previously reported, Broadway lost its greatest icon in Stephen Sondheim, who passed away at the age of 91. The legendary composer is widely acknowledged as the most innovative, most influential, and most important composer and lyricist in modern Broadway history.
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0:00
All right, so if you know your harmony cards really well, take these front microphones
0:12
down front. Does anyone need a lyric sheet? Does anyone have a lyric sheet? Who's off book? Hello
0:17
No speeches today, just some words from Steve, book two, page 430
0:30
When Wilson Meissner came out of a coma and saw a priest standing over him, he reportedly said
0:39
Why should I talk to you? I've just been talking to your boss. And promptly died
0:45
It's hard to believe he didn't work on it in advance, just as it's hard to believe that Oscar Wilde didn't work on
0:49
either that wallpaper goes or I do, apocryphal or not. For Gertha rehearse more light. After all, they were writers
0:57
If I have the breath to gasp it out dramatically, mine will be a quote from our time
1:03
A song in Merrily We Roll Along. There's so much stuff to sing
1:09
Page 32 on Sunday. This is the only lyric I've written that consists of one long incomplete sentence
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I wanted it to be like the descriptive caption you might read in a museum next to the painting
1:25
I hoped that the tone would echo the permanence of the painting, which is not only a miracle of composition and innovative technique
1:32
but also a satirical piece of reportage, something Lapine had pointed out to me
1:37
Seurat was as much a cartoonist as a painter. Once, during the writing of each show, I cry at a notion, a word, a chord, a melodic idea, an accompaniment figure
1:49
Only once in each case, curiously enough, since I'm an easy crier at works of art
1:53
particularly those made by others. For example, with Anyone Can Whistle, it was the phrase, hold me
1:59
at the end of With So Little To Be Sure Of, against the cord underneath. Follies, it was the word home
2:06
and the right girl. The Pacific Overture is the last line of someone in a tree
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Only cups of tea, and history, and someone in a tree. And merrily we roll along
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the vamp to our time. In this show, it was the word forever
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in Sunday. I was suddenly moved by the contemplation of what these people would have thought if they known they were being immortalized
2:34
And in a major way, in a great painting. I still cry when I think about it, but then I cry at Animal Planet
2:44
Often. One more line from James Lapine and we'll sing. Someday, by the blue and red water, on the green hill
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On the soft, real people pass As we pass
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Through a range dense of shadows Towards the verticals of trees
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Well, we're gathered here on a Sunday
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It's a song that no matter where you are and when you sing it, it brings us back to why
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his work means so much to us. So many people here, we have a point of light to why we're all here
6:50
And for so many of us, that point of life is the music of Sondheim's
6:54
And so as we're all here mourning and we're all grieving the loss of one of the great masters of all time
7:00
what else can we do but to express that in song, to express that in a song that has meant so much to us
7:07
and will continue to mean so much to us over the course of our lives. So I'm happy to be here and see so many friends and do that
7:12
Sondheim, for me, is the theater. He represents excellence at theater at its best
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No false rhymes beautiful music His music is I think perhaps my favorite to sing because he already thought out the character he thought out the thought in the music He thinks the pauses he thinks everything
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He's already worked that out for you. I always say I think his music is some of the easiest to sing
7:39
because if you just do what he wrote, you can't fail. I think it's safe to say that no one would
7:44
be here doing Broadway if it were not for Stephen Sondheim's contributions to our community and so
7:48
to honor him today is we're just so lucky and we're so i'm so grateful to get to be here
7:53
it was a really powerful powerful day he is was will always be a foundation of musical theater
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you know he provided such outlets and great work that so many of us got to relate to and
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got to express ourselves with and the magic that he made with his creativity and his evolution and
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his process is just life lessons that us as theater people absorb to the fullest so today
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is a celebration. Today is an exaltation of the magic and the man that is Stephen Sondheim
8:25
It's weird. I feel like most people discover Sondheim alone. Someone hands them a tape
8:30
in my case, or a CD or something, and you listen to it in your bedroom. And then when
8:34
you find out the rest of the world, the rest of the theater nerds love him as much as you
8:38
do, that it starts with something very private and very public. So being here and singing
8:43
with all of my peers and loved ones meant the world to me
8:47
And if you didn't cry when you sang Forever today, do you even have a heart? So Eric Bergen had called me last night
8:55
around 2 o'clock and said, you know, can we put something together? I'm thinking about doing something
9:02
Can we put something together in Times Square? I was like, okay, you know, we're going to try. And all of a sudden, three hours later
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we had a sound company involved. We had an arrangement involved. We had to make a new track of Sunday
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and we woke up this morning and it was very much like Wayne's thought
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We thought, are people going to come? And they showed up, so we're really happy about it
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It came together very quickly. I had the idea yesterday afternoon at around noon
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and by 1 o'clock we had had this area done and secured
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and then by 2 o'clock we were calling performers and even up to 11 a.m. this morning
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I was getting emails from Josh Groban saying, I'm running over. I'll be right there. So it all came together miraculously. And of course
9:46
you count on theater kids that you do that with a baton and everyone sings on exactly the right
9:50
note. So it was quite a magical thing today
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