Jeff Lunden
Jeff Lunden is a freelance arts reporter and producer whose stories have been heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, as well as on other public radio programs.
Lunden contributed several segments to the Peabody Award-winning series The NPR 100, and was producer of the NPR Music series Discoveries at Walt Disney Concert Hall, hosted by Renee Montagne. He has produced more than a dozen documentaries on musical theater and Tin Pan Alley for NPR — most recently A Place for Us: Fifty Years of West Side Story.
Other documentaries have profiled George and Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen and Jule Styne. Lunden has won several awards, including the Gold Medal from the New York Festival International Radio Broadcasting Awards and a CPB Award.
Lunden is also a theater composer. He wrote the score for the musical adaptation of Arthur Kopit's Wings (book and lyrics by Arthur Perlman), which won the 1994 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. Other works include Another Midsummer Night, Once on a Summer's Day and adaptations of The Little Prince and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for Theatreworks/USA.
Lunden is currently working with Perlman on an adaptation of Swift as Desire, a novel of magic realism from Like Water for Chocolate author Laura Esquivel. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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Though much of it is unwatchable today — it contains blackface and other minstrelsy — Shuffle Along brought jazz to Broadway and was the first African American show to be a smash hit.
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A live-music series founded in Europe, which connects one musician with one listener at a time, comes to Brooklyn for two weekends of concerts by Silkroad Ensemble artists.
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It's been more than a year since theater goers have been able to see an indoor performance in New York City. But some spaces and producers are moving to find safe ways to open up.
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Each year ahead of the Tony Awards, we profile essential theater professionals who aren't centerstage. This year, with theaters closed due to COVID-19, we check back in to see how they are coping.
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Not long after the Netflix Regency romance premiered on Christmas, two young songwriters asked on TikTok: "Ok but what if Bridgerton was a musical?" Millions of people wanted to know the answer.
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The Oscar-, Emmy- and Tony Award-winning actor began acting in films in the 1950s. He said he felt like he was "starting over" in acting every decade — "you never stop learning how to act," he said.
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On Jan. 25, 1996, a new rock musical by a little-known writer, Jonathan Larson, gave its first performance. But that show almost didn't happen: Larson died of an aortic aneurysm early that morning.
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With his trademark suspenders and Brooklyn-accented baritone, King spoke with world leaders, celebrities, authors, scientists, athletes — everyone.
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Broadway star Rebecca Luker has died of complications from ALS. She and her husband also had COVID-19 earlier this year.
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In normal times, audiences would be flocking to theaters for Christmas productionsright now. But 2020 is anything but normal — especially when it comes to holiday traditions.
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The Journeyis an ingenious use of a virtual performance space. Silven invites 30 audience members to travel to his childhood home in Scotland where they interact in amazing feats of magic.
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Created by Pulitzer-winning composer Ellen Reid, Soundwalk lets visitors score their socially distanced walks around the park with an ever-changing, GPS-sensitive soundtrack.