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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.

  • Nellie McKay, David Shiner and Bill Irwin use old-time comedy, newfangled tricks and zany music to score laughs in their new theatrical revue, <em>Old Hats</em>.
    For This Pair Of Clowns, 'Old Hats' Means New Laughs
    Jeff Lunden
    Theatrical clowning duo Bill Irwin and David Shiner haven't shared the spotlight onstage since the late 1990s. Now, with a collaborative theater project running at off-Broadway's Signature Theatre, they bring their zany brand of participatory slapstick to a new generation.
  • Grand Central Terminal, under construction in 1912, celebrates its 100th birthday on Friday.
    Grand Central, A Cathedral For Commuters, Celebrates 100
    Jeff Lunden
    The largest railroad terminal in the world opened its doors for the first time in 1913. And while Grand Central Terminal, in the heart of New York City, no longer serves long-distance trains, it is still a vibrant part of the city's ecosystem.
  • Jimmy Van Heusen with Frank Sinatra in the 1950s. Van Heusen wrote dozens of songs for the crooner and became Sinatra's close friend and confidant.
    The Composer Who Tested Fighter Planes And Partied With Sinatra
    Jeff Lunden
    A cool ladies' man with a shaved head, Jimmy Van Heusen was one of America's greatest popular composers. He wrote "Darn That Dream," "Swinging on a Star," "All the Way," "High Hopes," "Here's That Rainy Day," "Come Fly With Me" and more.
  • Quiara Alegria Hudes' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, <em>Water by the Spoonful,</em> opens off-Broadway on Tuesday. Above, Bill Heck as Fountainhead and Frankie R. Faison as Chutes & Ladders in the play, directed by Davis McCallum.
    A Vet's Haunted Homecoming In 'Water By The Spoonful'
    Jeff Lunden
    Quiara Alegria Hudes' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama opens off-Broadway on Tuesday. The play is the second in a trilogy focused on an injured Iraq veteran named Elliot — a character based on Hudes' cousin. "I just remember the instant I saw him, there was just something changed in his eye," she says.