STAGE TUBE: Jason Robert Brown Explains Why Stephen Sondheim is a Genius and Presents Him the Master Storyteller Award!

The City of Philadelphia declared June 1st Stephen Sondheim Day, when the legendary composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim was presented Arden Theatre Company's inaugural Master Storyteller Award. Below, watch as fellow composer Jason Robert Brown presents the award to him and explains to the crowd why he is a musical genius!

Among Sondheim's many works are Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Into the Woods (1987), Passion (1994), and Road Show (2008), as well as lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959). He has won more than 60 individual and collaborative Tony Awards, an Oscar for Best Song of 1999 for "Sooner Or Later" from the film Dick Tracy, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1984 for Sunday In The Park With George.

In film, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) and co-composed Reds (1981). In 1983, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which awarded him the Gold Medal for Music in 2006. In 1990 he was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University and was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993. Sondheim is on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers and lyricists, having served as its President from 1973 to 1981.

In 1981 he founded Young Playwrights Inc. to develop and promote the work of American Playwrights aged 18 years and younger. His collected lyrics with attendant essays have been published in two volumes: "Finishing the Hat" (2010) and "Look, I Made A Hat" (2011). In 2010 the Broadway theater formerly known as Henry Miller's Theatre was renamed in his honor.