Broadway composer Charles Strouse in New York Metropolis in 2011. Strouse died Thursday, Could 15, 2025, at 96.
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Andy Kropa/Getty Pictures
Broadway composer Charles Strouse in New York Metropolis in 2011. Strouse died Thursday, Could 15, 2025, at 96.
Andy Kropa/Getty Pictures
Tony Award-winning Broadway composer Charles Strouse has died. The creator of the hit musicals Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and Annie died at his residence in New York Metropolis on Thursday, in keeping with a press launch shared with NPR by The Press Room. Strouse was 96.
His 4 kids, Benjamin, Nicholas, Victoria, and William, shared the information of his passing. He was predeceased by his spouse, choreographer Barbara Siman, in 2023 after six a long time of marriage.
Strouse was a musical chameleon, mentioned theater historian Laurence Maslon. “Strouse was an important craftsperson. He adopted and tailored his vocabulary to regardless of the wants of the actual style have been.”
He may write songs within the fashion of early rock and roll, like “One Final Kiss” from Bye Bye Birdie, or Melancholy-Period New York, like “You are By no means Totally Dressed With out A Smile” in Annie, or ultra-groovy Nineteen Seventies New York, as in “However Alive” from Applause.
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Strouse was classically educated on the Eastman College of Music in Rochester, New York, and labored with American composer Aaron Copland. He was making a residing enjoying rehearsal piano for Broadway exhibits till a stage supervisor who wished to be a producer approached him, as he advised NPR in 2008.
“And he mentioned to me, ‘I hear you write music,'” Strouse recounted. “And I mentioned, ‘Sure, I do.’ He mentioned, ‘I’ve an concept for a present about youngsters, would you have an interest?’ I mentioned, ‘Would I!'”
The present was Bye Bye Birdie. It opened in 1960 and, though the New York Occasions panned it (calling it “neither fish nor fowl nor good musical comedy”), the present turned an unlimited hit, profitable the Tony for Greatest Musical. And since then, it has been one of the carried out exhibits in group theaters and excessive colleges.
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“It is a great feeling. And I’m modest, although not humbled in any approach,” Strouse advised NPR. “However I am a really fortunate man.”
Although he suffered a string of flops afterwards, Strouse had one other Tony Award-winning smash in 1970 with Applause, a musical model of All About Eve.
Strouse heard much more applause, and in 1977, he gained a Tony Award for greatest rating, with Annie, based mostly on the cartoon “Little Orphan Annie.” He mentioned the best-known tune from that rating, “Tomorrow,” was written in rehearsal, simply to cowl a set change.
“She discovered the canine and she or he needed to, in 12 seconds, as an instance, get again to the orphanage,” he defined. “So, we wanted a tune there.”
Andrea McArdle was 12 years previous when she starred in Annie. “My favourite factor was to hearken to him play his songs,” McArdle mentioned. “Not each composer is as charming as Charles Strouse is when he performs his music.”
Strouse stored working into his 80s on new initiatives, at a time when most creators would have been comfortable resting on their laurels.
“I like composing, I like it,” Strouse mentioned. “You already know, and if I am not composing, if I haven’t got a brand new mission or one thing, I am fairly at a lack of what to do.”
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