Cool (West Side Story song) Cool (West Side Story song) "Cool" is a song from the musical "West Side Story". Leonard Bernstein composed the music and Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics. This song is known for its fugal treatment of a jazz figure, described by one writer as "possibly the most complex instrumental music heard on Broadway to date". In 2011, actor Harry Shum Jr. performed the song, as his character Mike Chang from TV series "Glee", in the third episode of season 3, "Asian F" (aired on October 4). An episode of "Animaniacs" features a parody version as "Coo Bird" sung by Bobby of
Stephen Sondheim Willson's "Rock Island" from "The Music Man". The show was revived on Broadway in 2002. Sondheim and Lapine's last work together was the rhapsodic "Passion" (1994), adapted from Ettore Scola's Italian film "Passione D'Amore". With a run of 280 performances, "Passion" was the shortest-running show to win a Tony Award for Best Musical. "Assassins" opened off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on December 18, 1990, with music and lyrics by Sondheim and its book by John Weidman. The musical closed on February 16, 1991, after 73 performances. Its idea derived from Sondheim's days as a panelist at producer Stuart Ostrow's Musical Theater