Stephen Sondheim dies ‘suddenly’ aged 91 after Sweeney Todd composer had Thanksgiving dinner with friends

Stephen Sondheim has died aged 91 (Pictures: Getty)

Stephen Sondheim, the composer behind some of the biggest musicals including Sweeney Todd, has died at the age of 91.

News of his death was confirmed by his lawyer and friend F. Richard Pappas, who told the New York Times the composer’s death was ‘sudden’.

Pappas also revealed that Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving with a dinner with friends the day before he died in the early hours of Friday at his home in Roxbury, Conneticut.

Sondheim was born in New York in 1930 and wrote his first musical at the age of 15 after being tutored by Oscar Hammerstein.

His first hit was when he was 27 with West Side Story, which was a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in the 1950s.

Among his most famous musicals are Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Follies, Gypsy and Into The Woods.

Stephen Sondheim had his first hit at the age of 27 with West Side Story (Picture: Walter McBride/WireImage)

Over the course of his glittering career, Sondheim won nine Tony Awards, including one for lifetime achievement in 2008, eight Grammy awards, an Academy Award and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He told The New York Times in an interview in 2000, when he turned 70: ‘I have always conscientiously tried not to do the same thing twice.

‘If you’re broken-field running, they can’t hit you with so many tomatoes. I certainly feel out of the mainstream because what’s happened in musicals is corporate and cookie-cutter stuff. And if I’m out of fashion, I’m out of fashion.

His glittering career has been marked with a host of awards (Picture: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

‘Being a maverick isn’t just about being different. It’s about having your vision of the way a show might be.’

He also has theatres named for him on both Broadway in New York and the West End in London.

More: US Showbiz news

Sondheim is survived by husband Jeffrey Romley, who he married in 2017, as well as his half brother, Walter Sondheim.

His cause of death has not yet been confirmed.

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