Broadway composer Charles Strouse in New York in 2011. Strouse died on Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 96.
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Andy Kropa / Getty Images
Broadway composer Charles Strouse in New York in 2011. Strouse died on Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 96.
Andy Kropa / Getty Images
Broadway composer, Tony Award winner Charles Strouse has died. The creator of successful musicals Bye bye Birdie,, Applause And Annie Died at his home in New York on Thursday, according to a press release shared with NPR by the press room. Strouse was 96 years old.
His four children, Benjamin, Nicholas, Victoria and William, shared the news of his death. He was preceded by his wife, the choreographer Barbara Siman, in 2023 after six decades of marriage.
Strouse was a musical chameleon, said the historian of the Theater Laurence Maslon. “Strouse was a great craftsman. He adopted and adapted his vocabulary to all the needs of the particular genre.”
He could write songs in the style of early rock and roll, like “One Last Kiss” by Bye bye Birdieor New York from the time of depression, like “you are never completely dressed without smiling” Annieor ultra-kingdom from the 1970s in New York, as in “but live” Applause.
Strouse was trained in a classic way at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and worked with the American composer Aaron Copland. He made a living by playing the rehearsal piano for Broadway shows until a stage manager who wanted to be the producer the approach, as he said at NPR in 2008.
“And he said to me,” I hear you write music, “said Strouse.” And I said, “Yes, I do it.” He said: “I have an idea for a show on teenagers, would you be interested? I said, “I would do it!” “”
The show was Bye bye Birdie. It opened in 1960 and, even if the New York Times We were in (the appellant “neither fish nor poultry or good musical”), the series became a huge success, winning the tony of the best musical. And since then, it is one of the most efficient shows in community theaters and secondary schools.
“It is a wonderful feeling. And I am modest, but not humiliated in any way,” Strouse told NPR. “But I am a very lucky man.”
Although he suffered a series of flops later, Strouse had another award -winning Smash Tony Award in 1970 with ApplauseA musical version of Everything on Eve.
Strouse heard even more applause, and in 1977, he won a Tony Award for the best score, with AnnieBased on the comic strip “Little Orphan Annie”. He said that the best known song in this score, “Tomorrow”, was written in rehearsal, just to cover a change.
“She found the dog and she had to say, let’s say, return to the orphanage,” he said. “So we needed a song there.”
Andrea Mcardle was 12 years old when she played in Annie. “My favorite thing was to listen to him playing her songs,” said Mcarle. “Not all composers are as charming as Charles Strouse when he plays his music.”
Strouse continued to work in the 1980s on new projects, at a time when most of the creators were happy to rest on their laurels.
“I love composing, I love it,” said Strouse. “You know, and if I do not composing, if I have no new project or something, I am rather at a loss of what to do.”
