Last summer his sister Sarah Ashman Gillespie launched a beautiful tribute site, Howard Ashman: Part of His World. It’s a place for fans to learn and explore but it also seems to be an outlet for Sarah to rediscovered who her brother was.

I can’t carry on Howard’s singular talent as a writer and director but I can carry on other things he taught me. Like love for the arts and the sharing of ideas and enthusiasms. His enormous energy motivated so many of us to find our own creative selves. And that’s what I hope to continue here.

She’s been writing regular blog posts with family photos and personal reflections, such as Leisure Suit Christmas and How I Learned My Brother Was Gay.  You go, little sister!

In one passage, Sondheim acknowledges that the collections focus on only half of his creativity, since he writes both words and music.  While delving into the minutia of what makes a good song text, he purposely avoided technical discussions of melody, rhythm and harmony.  “Music is a foreign language that everyone knows but only musicians can speak,” he wrote.

As a counter balance to the anthologies of Sondheim the lyricist, there’s now a new project from pianist Anthony de Mare that honors Sondheim the composer.  “Liaisons: Celebrating Sondheim from the Piano,” which comes to the Hudson Opera House on Saturday (1/21), is an on-going concert and commissioning project wherein more than 30 composers create new works based on Sondheim’s songs.

Thirteen pieces will be part of Saturday’s program, with the contributing composers from many avenues of American music, including jazz (Fred Hersch), classical (William Bolcom), minimalism (Steve Reich) and opera (Jake Heggie).

“Each piece has become a wonderful marriage of the Sondheim material and the composer’s own individual style,” comments de Mare.  “Several of the composers have commented that this has been a very difficult assignment for them simply because they feel the songs are already so perfect.  They’ve nonetheless come through with a finished product that they seem quite proud of.”

The idea for “Liaisons” came to de Mare more than 20 years ago when he tried his own hand at arranging some Sondheim material.  But as a veteran of the contemporary music world, de Mare knows a wide circle of composers.  As Sondheim’s 80th birthday in March 2010 drew near, he had no trouble lining up other composers to join in the project.  All told, the processes of approaching composers, raising funds for the commissions, and scheduling concerts at venues large and small have been in the works for several years.

To get Sondheim on board with the project, de Mare first reached out with a letter.  He responded quickly, stating, “I’m flattered and delighted by your interest in my songs, and your project sounds intriguing indeed.”

More composers, young and old, continue to sign on as participants, which shouldn’t pose a problem as there’s an almost endless supply of Sondheim material at the ready. (The shows with his words and music number about 13 depending on how you count them.)

While the growing body of pieces is too much for one concert, the diversity of material allows de Mare to create new recital programs for each concert outing.  After the Hudson concert he heads to performances in Fort Worth and San Francisco followed by the New York City debut at Symphony Space in April.  Sondheim and most of the other composers are all scheduled to be on hand then.   Planned for next year is a second concert in Manhattan and a recording of the entire collection.

Though most of the composers in “Liaisons” come from the classical realm, there’s the potential for a wide audience due to the cult of Sondheim fans. (Did you know there’s an entire magazine devoted to Sondheim?  “The Sondheim Review” has been published quarterly since 1995.)

As for Sondheim’s own response to the project, de Mare says that over the past year he’s attended a number of private concerts where the new works have been tried out.  “He’s heard about 15 of the works thus far,” says de Mare, “and still comments on how humbled he is by the composers’ interest in and how inspired they are by his melodies and works.”

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

DeMare Launches his “Liaisons” with Sondheim, Concert review by Scott Pender

Happy 80th Birthday Stephen Sondheim

Anthony de Mare, Power Pianist

But that wouldn’t have been enough for these still ambitious performers.  Instead, with music director and accompanist Paul Ford they crafted a seamless evening of scenes — dramatic, comic and manic — laced with snippets of more than two dozen Broadway songs, mostly by Sondheim and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

They began by spitting out the dense lyrics of “Another Hundred People,” and soon settled into an abridged version of dialogue and songs from “South Pacific.”  After Patinkin’s character proposed marriage, LuPone reverted back to Sondheim with “Not Getting Married Today,” which was then interspersed with his lesser known “Loving You” from “Passion.”  And with that it was clear that this would not be a concert of neatly packaged songs delivered in front of the piano.  For most of the evening they segued rapidly from one number to another and there was no chit chat.

“April in Paris” was followed by the humorous “April in Fairbanks,” which was then followed by elaborate bit of choreography by Ann Reinking. They performed it sitting on black office chairs and ended with belly flops and quick rolling exits to opposite wings of the stage.

Then LuPone closed the first half with “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” belting it out at the edge of the stage, arms raised in her iconic pose.  She returned after intermission with another one of the show’s few solos, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”

Though Patinkin doesn’t have such signature songs, he made a grand tour de force comedy out of “The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues.” The second half also featured more understated medleys of song and dialogue from “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Carousel.”

The voices of both artists have aged over the years. LuPone’s is reedy in the midrange, while Patinkin is more of a robust baritone than the light tenor of earlier days.  But their lung capacity and general energy was still darned impressive.

The only adornments on the stage were a couple dozen randomly placed floor lamps with exposed bulbs. They brought to mind the “ghost light” that resides in every major theater and also the long and still thriving career of these valuable American artists.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.