This special encore episode of Broadway Nation was first released in the fall of 2022.

My guest is PAUL SALSINI, who many listeners will remember as the founder and original editor of The Sondheim Review, the first and only quarterly magazine ever devoted to a living musical theater composer.

Paul passed away earlier this month, at the age of 88, so I thought this was a very appropriate time to revisit this fascinating conversation. 

Paul launched the magazine in 1994, and over the following ten years, Paul exchanged notes, letters, faxes and phone calls with Stephen Sondheim — who it was clear was reading every word of every issue of the magazine — and Sondheim often had corrections and comments, or as he called them, “emendations.” On a few occasions these notes and phone calls included “vigorous objections” to what Paul had included the magazine, but overall Sondheim was wonderfully supportive and helpful.

In his book SONDHEIM AND ME, Paul chronicles his unlikely relationship with Sondheim during an eventful period that included the New York premieres of Passion and Saturday Night, the Kennedy Center’s Sondheim Celebration, Broadway revivals of six of Sondheim’s major works, and the decade long development of the musical that would eventually be called Road Show.

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