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 Boston Symphony Orchestra recently returned to its storied summer home, Tanglewood, after the pandemic canceled last season. With reopening comes normalcy, as well as an opportunity for growth. -
Jacob's Pillow had a particularly tough 2020, closed by pandemic and struck by a fire that consumed one of its theaters. This summer the dance center rises from the ashes, literally and figuratively.
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Known for its deft handling of canonical classics and contemporary music, the Attacca Quartet breaks new ground on a major-label debut featuring music by Flying Lotus, Squarepusher and other EDM acts.
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The Statue of Liberty has a little sister, a 9-foot casting from Bartholdi's original mold. It departed Normandy by boat and arrives in New York City soon for temporary installation on Ellis Island.
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Lincoln Center observes Juneteenth, now a federal holiday, with "I Dream a Dream That Dreams Back at Me," an ambulatory experience conceived by Carl Hancock Rux.
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Though much of it is unwatchable today — it contains blackface and other minstrelsy — Shuffle Along brought jazz to Broadway and was the first African American show to be a smash hit.
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A live-music series founded in Europe, which connects one musician with one listener at a time, comes to Brooklyn for two weekends of concerts by Silkroad Ensemble artists.
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The past year, with COVID and calls for social justice, has made those running Lincoln Center and other arts organizations question their core missions, says Lincoln Center's president Henry Timms.
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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says Broadway can open on May 19. But opening a show takes time.
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It's been more than a year since theater goers have been able to see an indoor performance in New York City. But some spaces and producers are moving to find safe ways to open up.
