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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As venues across the country have shut down in response to the coronavirus, some theaters have made archival videos of the closed productions available online, for the cost of a ticket.
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Fiona is a 3-year-old, 1,300-pound hippo, and she's a growing girl. Her keeper, Jenna Wingate, is grateful to be able to work during the coronavirus crisis: "It feels good to be needed," she says.
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McNally had suffered from lung cancer and pulmonary problems. He won his first Tony Award for Kiss of the Spider Woman. He also won Tonys for Love! Valor! Compassion!, Master Class and Ragtime.
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The Irish dance spectacle has been performed for audiences all over the world. The current production was polished for the anniversary, but has been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday announced a statewide ban of gatherings of more than 500 people. That includes Broadway's 41 theaters.
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The Broadway songwriter died in Miami of pulmonary complications, according to his publicist.
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Broadway attendance is up — yet the $35 million production of King Kong is among the five shows cutting bait in the next two weekends, as musical theater undergoes a market correction.
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The winner of an unprecedented 21 Tony Awards, Prince left a major impact on American musical theater. Among his shows: Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof and The Phantom of the Opera. He was 91.
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Sue Monk Kidd's bestselling novel tells the story of a white girl taken in by a family of black beekeepers. The premise posed a welcome challenge for black Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage.
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New York City Opera has commissioned Stonewall,a new opera premiering one week before the 50th anniversary of the riots that sparked the modern gay-rights movement.