In the world of musical theatre he always will be remembered for the highly successful Broadway shows "Sweet Charity", "Barnum, "The Life" and " City of Angels". He died age 75 leaving behind a legacy of familiar soul, swing and funk tunes written for the Broadway.

Besides the shows' million sellers "Big Spender!" , which later became a mega hit with Shirley Bassey, he was composing single songs such as "Witchcraft" and "The Best Is Yet to Come", which became standards for Frank Sinatra. On top of more than 14 full-length theatre shows, he provided the music for numerous films and on his own was a pianist of dazzling virtuosity.

Stylistically he ranged from the classical musical world. As a child in the Bronx, he began playing the piano in a block of flats managed by his parents. When his father's efforts at noise abatement by nailing the keyboard lid shut failed to have any effect, he was encouraged to become a precocious child star, playing at Carnegie Hall in his ninth year. He specialised to the area of jazz, which he not only introduced to his theatre scores. The mix of styles later became trademark of a "Cy Coleman song" or score with its easy wit, a catchy melody and elegant construction.

Coleman's Tony awards started arriving thick and fast after "On the Twentieth Century" in 1978, and continuing with "City of Angels" and "The Will Rogers Follies", a country-and- western-inspired show that had lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. He won numerous Emmy awards for his film and television work, and had been presented with his second Johnny Mercer Award on November 14, in 2004 - just four days before his death from a heart attack after he attended the Broadway premiere of the "Democracy".

In recent years he had recorded as a singer and pianist, written his latest show, The Great Ostrovsky, which opened in Philadelphia recently, and was preparing a musical based on Wendy Wasserstein's children's book, Pamela's First Musical.

Single for most of his life, Coleman married Shelby Brown (photo on his right side - taken at the Johnny Mercer Award Ceremony hours before his tragic death) in 1997, and she survives him with their four-year-old daughter Lily Cye.

Cy Coleman, composer and pianist, was born on June 14, 1929. He died on November 18, 2004, aged 75.

Coleman won his first Tony Award for composing the music of the 1978 comic-operetta On the Twentieth Century, for which Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the lyrics. Future Tony Awards would come for his bluesy film noir score for 1989's City of Angels (written with David Zippel) and his Wild-West-meets-Big Broadway songs for The Will Rogers Follies (again with Comden and Green), the cast recording of which earned him two Grammy Awards. He earned additional Tony nominations for the big-top musical Barnum (1980) and the street-walker saga The Life (1997). Coleman also wrote the score for Welcome to the Club, which had a brief Broadway run in 1989. A revival of Sweet Charity, starring television actress Christina Applegate and Tony winner Denis O'Hare, opened on Broadway in the spring 2004.

He was honoured with a star-studded tribute at Avery Fisher Hall in 1992, and in 1994 he received both the Irvin Fold Humanitarian Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews and an honorary doctorate in music from Long Island University. Last month, Coleman had a gig at Feinstein's at the Regency. On November 6, the composer was feted by the Los Angeles theatrical community with an Actors' Fund of America benefit concert titled The Best Is Yet to Come: The Music of Cy Coleman.

On Monday night, November 15, 2004 Cy Coleman was honoured by the Johnny Mercer Foundation with an awards presentation, and performance. The evening included a musical tribute featuring: Tony Bennett, Chita Rivera, Brian Stokes Mittchell, Margaret Whiting, Glenn Close, and Kathie Lee Gifford with The Accentuate The Positive Kids.

The Johnny Mercer Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of The Great American Song Book and sponsors "Accentuate the Positive", a program that teaches New York City public school teachers how to include the works of great American songwriters in their curricula; supports the Johnny Mercer/Sundance Institutes for young songwriters and actors and sponsors the work of young songwriters across the country.