Barbra Streisand’s tribute to Marvin Hamlisch

Marvin Hamlisch would have to be considered a singular sensation.

At 6, he became one of the youngest students ever admitted to the prestigious Juilliard music school in New York.

He  went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, the Oscar, the Tony, the Emmy and the Grammy. He achieved an Academy Awards hat trick in 1974, winning in three music categories — score adaptation (The Sting), best original dramatic score (The Way We Were) and best song (The Way We Were) with the lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman).

On his third trip to the podium, Hamlisch quipped to the Oscar-night crowd, “I think we can now talk to each other as friends.”

Hamlisch, who also wrote Broadway’s A Chorus Line, died Tuesday at the age of 68.

His close friend, Barbra Streisand, has released this statement: “I’m devastated. He was my dear friend. He’s been in my life ever since the first day I met him in 1963, when he was my rehearsal pianist for “Funny Girl.” He played at my wedding in 1998… and recently for me at a benefit for women’s heart disease. The world will remember Marvin for his brilliant musical accomplishments, from “A Chorus Line” to “The Way We Were,” and so many others, but when I think of him now, it was his brilliantly quick mind, his generosity, and delicious sense of humor that made him a delight to be around. Just last night, I was trying to reach him, to tell him how much I loved him, and that I wanted to use an old song of his, that I had just heard for the first time. He was a true musical genius, but above all that, he was a beautiful human being. I will truly miss him.”