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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Yarrow wrote or co-wrote some of the group's biggest 1960s hits, including "Puff, the Magic Dragon" and "Day Is Done." -
Breakthrough infections from the omicron variant have been spreading like wildfire among casts and crews, so understudies and swing performers have been helping keep shows afloat. -
Isolated by pandemic last year, violinist Jennifer Koh asked prominent composers to donate tiny pieces, and to nominate fellow up-and-coming composers to receive paid commissions. -
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says Broadway can open on May 19. But opening a show takes time. -
Last spring, student performers had their hopes of stardom dashed as schools abruptly closed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A year later, we follow two schools putting on the same musical.
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Each year ahead of the Tony Awards, we profile essential theater professionals who aren't centerstage. This year, with theaters closed due to COVID-19, we check back in to see how they are coping. -
Broadway star Rebecca Luker has died of complications from ALS. She and her husband also had COVID-19 earlier this year.
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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.
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In normal times, audiences would be flocking to theaters for Christmas productionsright now. But 2020 is anything but normal — especially when it comes to holiday traditions. -
It's hard to predict exactly how theater will come back after the pandemic, but here are a couple guesses: Fewer crowds, more collective imagination, and a focus on racial and environmental justice.
