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.
-
Broadway star Rebecca Luker has died of complications from ALS. She and her husband also had COVID-19 earlier this year.
-
A mainstay in Broadway musicals, her standout turnas Roxie Hart in Chicagoin 1977 earned her widespread praise. She reprised the role in 1996 and won a Tony. -
The magazine given out at theaters isn't just a program, it's a cherished souvenir. The publication has doubled down on its digital offerings, and to almost everyone's surprise, it's doing quite well. -
Broadway has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19. Theaters are shuttered indefinitely, millions of dollars have been lost, and some members of the community have been infected by the coronavirus. -
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. -
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. -
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.
-
The success of Amazon Studio's Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has spawned a bus tour of some of the show's New York locations.
-
Sometimes life imitates art. In a production of Fiddler on the Roof, which contains a meddling matchmaker trying to get couples together, the two real-life leads have fallen in love.
-
James Corden hosted the Tony Awards Sunday night in New York. Hadestown won 8 Tony Awards — including best musical. It's written, produced and directed by women.
