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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This production uses a cast of multi-racial actors who are female, nonbinary and trans — people who weren't even considered in the Declaration of Independence. -
Lansbury's acting career extended over an extraordinary seven decades. She says she knew early on that she'd never be "groomed to be a glamorous movie star" and thus sought out nontraditional roles.
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Classical 101The new David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center, home of the New York Philharmonic, opens this week. And while the outside is the same, everything inside has changed.
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Classical 101In 2014, a study found that only 1.4% of orchestra musicians were Black. In 2022, it's hard to know if that number is better or worse. -
Rodgers, the daughter of theatrical legend Richard Rogers, was a songwriter, children's book author and philanthropist. Her memoir, Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers, is out now. -
A concert version of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods stars Sara Bareilles, Brian d'Arcy James, Joshua Henry and others. -
The play is based on Khaled Hosseini's 2003 best-selling novel, set in Afghanistan and among Afghan migrants in the United States. -
Guirira said it was interesting to explore "toxic masculinity" as a perpetrator instead of an object - and that the role brought up a lot of questions. -
Sanaz Toossi is having a moment – her first production ever, English, just won a Lucille Lortel award for outstanding new off-Broadway play, and Wish You Were Here opened last week. -
These nominations are for Broadway's first season after the 2020 COVID shutdown.
