Composer-lyricist, Jerry Herman, has passed away at the age of 88 on December 26 in Miami, Florida. According to his goddaughter Jane Dorianhe, the cause of death was pulmonary complications.
Herman wrote two of the most popular Broadway musicals of the 1960s Hello, Dolly! and Mame as well as La Cage aux Folles in the 1980s and a handful of musicals and rousing show tunes in between.
According to Playbill, Mr. Herman rose to prominence during the same years that saw Stephen Sondheim—the other preeminent composer-lyricist of the last half century—find his voice. In many ways, Mr. Herman was the anti-Sondheim. Sondheim’s style was intellectual and psychologically probing, Mr. Herman’s songs bear-hugged emotion; if Sondheim’s melodies were sometimes hard to locate, Mr. Herman’s were as bright and brash as a coronet. He won the Tony Award for Best Musical over Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George.
He said he would never write another show.
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