Tonight Quintet Tonight Quintet The "Tonight Quintet" is a number from the musical "West Side Story" (1957), with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Carol J. Oja has written that, "with the 'Tonight' quintet, Bernstein once again created a masterpiece of ensemble, one that rivals the best of such moments in European opera." Her remark echoes the earlier view of Will Crutchfield. In his review of the 1984 studio performance of "West Side Story", which was conducted by Bernstein himself, Crutchfield wrote that the release of the recording "is above all an occasion for celebrating one of the great
Stephen Sondheim parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. As the only child of well-to-do parents living in the San Remo on Central Park West, he was described in Meryle Secrest's biography ("Stephen Sondheim: A Life") as an isolated, emotionally-neglected child. When he lived in New York, Sondheim attended ECFS, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School known simply as "Fieldston". He later attended the New York Military Academy and George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where he wrote his first musical, "By George," and from which he graduated in 1946. Sondheim spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin.