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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The Fun Home won best musical, best book and best original score — to name just a few of the honors. The award for best play went to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.
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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has written a trilogy of provocative and fantastical explorations of race. His latest, based on a 1859 melodrama, pokes fun at conventions while raising difficult questions.
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Producer Darren Bagert says there's a boom-or-bust environment on Broadway — you're either a huge hit or you close quickly. Two of the fall's most highly anticipated musicals are closing this month. -
The resplendent New York piano showroom is shutting down to make way for luxury condos. But that doesn't mean the company is going anywhere. -
The oratorio is a time-honored way for classical composers to tell a big story. Composer Ted Hearne thinks so too. His new oratorio, The Source, takes on the story of Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks.
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It began as a small classical label selling records at modest prices. A half-century later, it issues albums from big names in a spectrum of contemporary music from all parts of the globe. -
While agreements with 10 more unions need to be reached by Tuesday night, the deal struck with two of the Met's major unions represents a major turning point in a bitter dispute. -
Labor disputes are nothing new to the Met Opera, but never have they been so public. With a deadline looming, both sides signal that negotiations are going nowhere. -
If no contract deal is reached by July 31, Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb has warned union workers to plan for a work stoppage the next day. -
Glenn Dicterow became the youngest concertmaster in New York Philharmonic history in 1980, when he was just 31. After spending more than half his life leading the violin section, he says goodbye.
