Top 64 Sondheim Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Sondheim informs us, more than any other composer, about the joys, passion and pain of being a woman living in various social conditions through the ages with frightening accuracy. Playing a variety of his characters has always made me feel like I'm having a free therapy session through his words and music!

In many ways, I think I'm a good person for it. I mean, I'm not a musical theater dude. Or rather, I don't watch everything, and love everything, and have every album. The ones that I love - like I've seen The Wizard of Oz a hundred times. West Side Story I love. I love Singing in the Rain, I love White Christmas. I love the Dennis Potter ones like Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven. I love Sondheim.

The only Train song I like is the one that I play in my act "Drops Of Jupiter". Sheryl Crow has three or four songs that I like; also Dave Matthews Band. With those particular musicians, it's more that there are a few songs that I like rather than their entire body of work. There are a lot of indie bands that I like too. I'm not a snob about music. Does the fact that I like Stephen Sondheim and Broadway musicals make me a fake? Does the fact that I'm "the Billy Joel of comedy" mean that I don't have indie-rock credibility?

Popular music of the last 50 years has failed to keep in step with advances in musical theater, namely Stephen Sondheim. But the two have grown apart so that popular music is based more than ever on a rhythmic grid that is irrelevant in musical theater. In popular music, words matter less and less. Especially now that it's so international, the fewer words the better. While theater music becomes more and more confined to a few blocks in midtown.