SIDE BY SIDE WITH SONDHEIM AMERICA'S PRE-EMINENT MUSICAL THEATER COMPOSER DISCUSSES HIS CAREER AS THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL THROWS A STAR-STUDDED TRIBUTE.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

NEW YORK - Stephen Sondheim's last show on Broadway was a revival of ``Pacific Overtures'' that closed earlier this year.

It came on the heels of two other Sondheim revivals, Joe Mantello's highly acclaimed staging of ``Assassins,'' which won five Tony Awards the previous spring, and a roundly panned new version of ``The Frogs'' that Nathan Lane adapted and starred in at Lincoln Center last summer.

Yet even when Sondheim's shows aren't running here, his influence on the Great White Way remains palpable. Certainly, the two most esteemed musicals this past season - Adam Guettel's ``The Light in the Piazza'' and William Finn's ``The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,'' both doing excellent business - owe great debts to Sondheim, for both words and music.

So don't expect ``Stephen Sondheim's 75th: The Concert'' at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday to be some sort of grand send-off for the most important American theater composer since Leonard Bernstein. Indeed, to rival Sondheim for sheer number of influential and critically acclaimed musicals, you would have to go back to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Still, there's no getting around the valedictory nature of the Bowl program. But perhaps that can't be helped when the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by longtime Sondheim collaborator Paul Gemignani, is slated to back up a first-class lineup of Sondheim interpreters, including Carol Burnett, Len Cariou, Barbara Cook, Angela Lansbury, Audra McDonald, Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch. And they're not the only singers: Jason Alexander, who made his Broadway debut in Sondheim's ``Merrily We Roll Along'' some 20 years ago, Josh Groban, Eric McCormack, Vanessa Williams and others will also perform.

``It has retirement written all over it,'' Sondheim said in a telephone interview from his Manhattan studio on Sunday.

The man is no stranger to tributes, of course, having been honored regularly since 1973. But what keeps him coming to them is his insistence that they be tied to charitable causes, which in the past have included Roundabout Theatre Company, the Young Playwrights Festival and the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

The Bowl event is no different for Sondheim, the concert just an excuse to inaugurate an ASCAP Foundation program named in his honor. Called Children Will Listen, the project's goal is to acquaint young people with musical theater. The performers are waiving their normal fees to help the program, and the Philharmonic is picking up the tab for producing the concert.

``What they're doing is so terrific,'' says Sondheim of the ASCAP initiative, which will be announced from the Bowl stage as part of a presentation to the composer-lyricist.

Acknowledging Sondheim's singularity in musicals is easy, but defining it isn't. Peters - who created the roles of Dot in ``Sunday in the Park With George'' and the Witch in ``Into the Woods'' - cites ``intelligence and heart'' as central to his work, adding that because he writes both music and lyrics, his characters are drawn unusually sharply.

``He can write precisely what he wants them to express,'' she says. ``Quarter notes to be angry; whole notes to be happy. That helps you interpret the character. He writes for what the character is saying.''

The sentiment is echoed by Gemignani, who, since working as music director in ``Follies'' and then ``A Little Night Music'' in the early 1970s, has conducted the premiere of every new Sondheim musical. ``He's writing for individuals. He's writing for Desiree. He's writing for Fosca,'' says Gemignani, referring to two of the leads in ``A Little Night Music'' and ``Passion,'' respectively.

And yet, paradoxically, that specificity is what lends Sondheim's songs their universal qualities, and what makes numbers like ``Send in the Clowns'' so popular in revue, cabaret and concert contexts. Not since the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, and Cole Porter has a theater composer achieved that kind of impact beyond the footlights.

``Listen to 'Losing My Mind' or 'In Buddy's Eyes,' '' says Gemignani, referring to ``Follies.'' ``What happens to Sally could happen to anyone, and singers approach such material by saying, 'This is who I am today.' Or take 'Broadway Baby.' That character is an old showgirl, but a little girl could sing it. Anyone can sing it, and it still works.''

That's almost ironic given the dark subjects around which Sondheim has often built his shows, as varied as they are bold: sexually frustrated Swedes (``A Little Night Music''), commitment-phobic and discontented New Yorkers (``Company''), a murderous barber and his entrepreneurial but cannibalistic accomplice (``Sweeney Todd''), the birth of pointillism (``Sunday in the Park With George''), the epilogues to fairy tales even the grim Grimms avoided (``Into the Woods''), the secret lives of presidential killers (``Assassins''), for example.

``It does make you think about different things,'' Peters says of Sondheim's oeuvre. ``It's always entertaining, but there's something more. Most of his songs bring up topics others haven't thought about. And they're deep thoughts.''

Indeed, they are. And just where they come from has generated much speculation, including a passel of books on Sondheim. The answers are, of course, complex and varied. But the roots are not. They stem from a boyhood friendship Sondheim had with Oscar Hammerstein II, a neighbor and one of the towering figures in American musical theater.

``He was my mentor,'' recalls Sondheim. ``He took a teenage kid and opened me up to the techniques of writing for the American musical theater. I saw the possibilities, but he gave me the tools.''

Knowing that history, it's easy to see why the ASCAP program means so much to Sondheim. Without Hammerstein to point the way, Sondheim might never have become, well, Sondheim.

His devotion to Hammerstein transcends gratitude, though. To Sondheim, Hammerstein, co-creator of ``The King and I'' and ``The Sound of Music,'' is a great innovator, even if largely unsung today.

Dismissing comments of his own importance - ``It's nice to hear'' and ``I'd like to believe that'' - Sondheim extols his mentor's influence and reduces his own contributions to the art form to ``passing the baton.''

``It's Oscar who deserves that credit,'' says Sondheim. ``He's the force behind 'Show Boat' and 'Oklahoma!' - which really changed the American musical theater. Most people don't think of him as an experimental playwright, but that's exactly what he was. People underestimate the innovation in his writing.''

The comfort Sondheim feels discussing theater history does not extend to speculating about the art form's future, though. ``I just don't do overviews and prognostications,'' he says. ``Whatever you say just turns out to be wrong. But I do know that building new audiences is vital to the heath of musical and nonmusical theater.''

And he has news for those suggesting that he's finally tapped out, that no new musical will follow the failure of the endlessly reworked ``Bounce,'' a show abandoned before coming to Broadway. ``I'm writing,'' he says. ``It's what I do. And I enjoy it. There's no point in retiring.''

He is, however, wary of revealing too much about his planned projects. ``I think I'd better not share what I'm working on,'' he says. ``It's not that it's a secret. I just don't want it to be anticipated.''

Not a chance of that, of course.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM'S 75TH: THE CONCERT

What: Featuring performances by Carol Burnett, Len Cariou, Barbara Cook, Angela Lansbury, Audra McDonald, Bernadette Peters, Elaine Stritch, Jason Alexander, Josh Groban, Eric McCormack and Vanessa Williams

Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Friday.

Tickets: A few $14 seats still available. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) By Sondheim

Star-studded lineup to sing composer's praises at Hollywood Bowl

(2) no caption (Stephen Sondheim)

(3) ``Most of (Sondheim's) songs bring up topics others haven't thought about,'' says Bernadette Peters, who will be on hand for the tribute to the composer at the Bowl on Friday.

(4 -- 6) Other Sondheim interpreters scheduled to appear at the Hollywood Bowl include, clockwise from top, Vanessa Williams (as the witch), Carol Burnett and Jason Alexander.

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times