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.
-
The New York Philharmonic launches its season with a new music director and executive director. The Metropolitan Opera's season starts with a young music director. -
In a letter to the New York City Ballet, Peter Martins announced he has decided to retire as its artistic director and head of its school. The announcement follows allegations from current and former dancers of sexual misconduct and physical abuse.
-
The famed conductor Charles Dutoit has been accused of sexual misconduct by four women including opera star Sylvia McNair. Six major orchestras have distanced themselves from him.
-
Before she was a famous author, Strayed wrote an advice column under the pseudonym "Dear Sugar." Now, it's been adapted into an unlikely off-Broadway play starring Nia Vardalos. -
Albee died in 2016, and in his will he asked that all his incomplete manuscripts be destroyed — including a play that was supposed to open off-Broadway. -
The class-action suit brought against the hit musical doesn't seek damages. The attorneys say the hope is to draw attention to Broadway's spotty record in serving audiences with disabilities.
-
The Rockettes are as American as apple pie, but some dancers in the famous troupe don't want to perform at Donald Trump's inauguration.
-
Neville Marriner died overnight at age 92. The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conductor was famous for his score to the Academy Award-winning film Amadeus.
-
You might not know Marni Nixon's name, but you've probably heard her. Nixon dubbed the voices for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Deborah Kerr in The King and I. -
Tony Awards host James Corden and the night's biggest winners paid an emotional tribute to the 50 lives lost in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday morning.
