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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Wynton Marsalis, Bryan Stevenson and a host of musicians release a record that captures the rhythm of life -
The three-time Tony Award-winning Broadway legend created indelible roles: Anita in West Side Story, Rose in Bye Bye Birdie and Velma Kelly in Chicago. -
Producers have been saying for years that large Broadway orchestras are not financially feasible. In fact, the issue led to a strike 20 years ago. So why are some shows bringing them back? -
An off-Broadway show, based on a 1931 novel, explores the results when a scientist charges Black people $50 each to change their race with his new invention. -
The PROTOTYPE festival, now in its 10th year, presents new operas and music-theater works in smaller settings. "We were trying to create a black box opera movement," says co-founder Beth Morrison. -
Kelli O'Hara, Renée Fleming, and Joyce DiDonato star in a new opera based on Michael Cunningham's book. -
The 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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In 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. -
The big-voiced soprano is in her mid-thirties, and she didn't even hear an opera live until she was in her twenties. Now, she's a sought-after opera singer. -
The celebrated composer-songwriter died on Friday. He had won several Tonys and Grammys, as well as an Oscar and Pulitzer, for musicals including West Side Story and Company.
