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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The off-Broadway play Every Brilliant Thing tackles its dark subject through audience participation and comedy. Both critics and audience members have described it as incredibly moving. -
Producer Darren Bagert says there's a boom-or-bust environment on Broadway — you're either a huge hit or you close quickly. Two of the fall's most highly anticipated musicals are closing this month. -
The resplendent New York piano showroom is shutting down to make way for luxury condos. But that doesn't mean the company is going anywhere. -
Also known as the Polish Tea Room, the Café Edison is a favorite of regular New Yorkers and Broadway stars and crew. Now, Jeff Lunden reports it's being threatened with eviction by its landlord. -
The oratorio is a time-honored way for classical composers to tell a big story. Composer Ted Hearne thinks so too. His new oratorio, The Source, takes on the story of Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks.
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Legendary theater director Peter Brook is working on a new play centered on people with unusual conditions — like synesthesia, extraordinary memory or the inability to sense their own bodies. -
It began as a small classical label selling records at modest prices. A half-century later, it issues albums from big names in a spectrum of contemporary music from all parts of the globe. -
While agreements with 10 more unions need to be reached by Tuesday night, the deal struck with two of the Met's major unions represents a major turning point in a bitter dispute. -
If no contract deal is reached by July 31, Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb has warned union workers to plan for a work stoppage the next day. -
Glenn Dicterow became the youngest concertmaster in New York Philharmonic history in 1980, when he was just 31. After spending more than half his life leading the violin section, he says goodbye. -
The soundtrack to Disney's Frozen has been the biggest-selling album of 2014, topping the Billboard album chart for 13 weeks. -
The legendary Harlem nightclub and the artists and music it's synonymous with are being celebrated in a new Broadway revue. Jeff Lunden talks to cast members and the creators about the pleasures and perils of paying homage to a place with a problematic history.
