Today we shine a special spotlight on today's annual birthday twofer with a tribute to the men behind the music themselves, The Lord & The Master aka Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim.
Send In The Music Of The Night "The Music Of The Night". "Send In The Clowns". "Memory". "Being Alive". "Jesus Christ Superstar". "No One Is Alone". "Don't Cry For Me Argentina". "Not While I'm Around". And, those are just the biggest hit songs! Without a doubt, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim have collectively created many of the most highly-awarded and most universally recognizable musicals of the 20th and 21st century, both firmly establishing themselves as major composers on the Great White Way in the early 1970s, while also having many of their most famous productions running on Broadway concurrently. Of course, Stephen Sondheim made an early mark on popular culture with his lyrics for Golden Age classics WEST SIDE STORY and GYPSY before breaking out on his own as composer/lyricist of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM and ANYONE CAN WHISTLE in the 1960s. In 1970, COMPANY ensconced him as a Tony Award-winning composer and lyricist in his own right, with a string of momentous musicals following shortly thereafter, including FOLLIES, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC and PACIFIC OVERTURES, closing out the decade with modern musical masterpiece SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET in 1979. Similarly, Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice found early success in the late 1960s with their pop operetta JOSEPH & THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT, with the pair soon after achieving worldwide acclaim byway of international smash hit concept albums for JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR in 1970 and EVITA in 1976, followed by successful stage iterations. Lloyd Webber's hit composer status increased further with CATS in 1981, with the show arriving the same year as Sondheim's final major partnership with collaborator and director Hal Prince, on MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.
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