Alan Menken

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Alan Irwin Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American composer, songwriter, music conductor, director and record producer.

Menken is best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios.

His scores and songs for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) have each won him two Academy Awards.

He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), among others. He is also known for his work in musical theatre for Broadway and elsewhere.

Some of these are based on his Disney films, but other stage hits include Little Shop of Horrors (1982), A Christmas Carol (1994) and Sister Act (2009). Menken has collaborated with such lyricists as Lynn Ahrens, Howard Ashman, Jack Feldman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, Stephen Schwartz and David Zippel.

With eight Academy Award wins, Menken is the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, who has 9 Oscars.

He has also won 11 Grammy Awards, a Tony Award and many other honors.

Early life

Alan Irwin Menken was born on July 22, 1949, at French Hospital in Manhattan, to Judith and Norman Menken. His father was a boogie-woogie piano-playing dentist, and his mother was an actress, dancer and playwright. His family was Jewish. Menken developed an interest in music at an early age, taking piano and violin lessons. He began to compose at an early age. At age nine, at the New York Federation of Music Clubs Junior Composers Contest, his original composition "Bouree" was rated Superior and Excellent by the judges.

He attended New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, New York, and graduated in 1967. Menken remembers: "I'd make up my own Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas because I was bored with the piano and I didn't want to practice; so I'd go off on tangents". He then enrolled at New York University. He graduated with a degree in musicology in 1971 from the university's Steinhardt School. Menken recalled: "First, I was pre-med. I thought I'd be a dentist like my dad. Finally, I got a degree in music, but I didn't care about musicology. It wasn't until I joined BMI Workshop ... under Lehman Engel, and walked into a room with other composers that I knew this was it." Menken noted that "Before college, I was writing songs to further my dream of being the next Bob Dylan. A lot of guitar songs – I was composing on piano before that." After college, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.

Personal life

Menken was introduced to ballet dancer Janis Roswick while working with the Downtown Ballet Company. They have been married since November 1972 and live in North Salem, New York. They have two daughters, Anna Menken and Nora Menken.

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Career

Menken's dream after graduating was to become a rock star or a recording artist. As he joined the Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) Musical Theatre Workshop, he was mentored by Lehman Engel. He exhibited various BMI workshop performances, including Midnight, Apartment House, as well as the Messiah on Mott Street from 1974 to 1978 (lyrics by David Zippel).

"During this period, he worked as a ballet and modern dance accompanist, a recording designer, a guitarist for club performances, a songwriter for Sesame Street, and a vocal coach," Menken said. He appeared in clubs such as The Ballroom, Reno Sweeny, and Tramps.

In 1976, John Wilson of The New York Times announced that members of Engel's BMI Workshop began appearing in "Broadway at the Ballroom" series: "The first workshop program featured Maury Yeston and Alan Menken, both performing their piano accompaniment and writing songs for future musicals." Wilson compared a performance at the Ballroom in 1977, where Menken accompanied a singer." "A piano accompanist is no longer expected to simply play piano for a singer in the modern cabaret era." Pianoists are increasingly singing along, harmonieizing with the artist, establishing a backdrop of yells and screams, or even short excerpts of solo singing."

Menken wrote a book about Back in Town, Big Apple Country (1977), The Present Tense (1979), Real Life Funnies (Off-Broadway, 1984), and Personals (Off-Broadway, 1985). Patch, Patch, Patch was his own newspaper published in New York City in 1979 and featured Chip Zien. Mel Gussow, a New York Times reviewer, wrote: "The title tune... refers to a life's journey." "It's a downhill slide" after age 30, according to Alan Menken.

Menken wrote several shows that weren't produced, including Atina, Evil Queen of the Galaxy (1980), with lyrics by Steve Brown. Brown wrote The Thorn with lyrics by Brown, which was also published by Divine in 1980. This was a parody of The Rose, but they couldn't have the funds to have it made. He collaborated with Howard Ashman in an uncompleted musical called Babe (1981), and The Dream in Royal Street (c. 1981), a revival of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and with David Rogers in The Dream in Royal Street (c. 1981). Menken produced music for the film The Line (1980), directed by Robert J. Siegel.

When playwright Howard Ashman selected him and Engel to write the music for his musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Menken's finally achieved success as a composer. The musical opened in 1979 at the WPA Theater, earning raves and a modest box office. It moved after several months to the Off-Broadway Entermedia Theater, where it lasted for an additional six weeks.

Menken and Ashman's new musical, Little Shop of Horrors, was written for a cast of only 9 actors, including a puppeteer. This musical is based on the 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors. It opened in 1982 to tameling audiences at the WPA Theater. It was located in the East Village, Manhattan, where it remained for five years. The musical set a new record for the highest grossing Off-Broadway show of all time. It toured around the world, received theatre awards, and was adapted as a 1986 musical film starring Rick Moranis. In 1983, he was given the BMI Career Achievement Award for his body of work in musical theatre.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, a 1959 book of the same name, was published in Philadelphia in 1987. Menken and lyricist David Spencer's version The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, based on the 1959 novel of the same name, was published in Philadelphia. It was published in Montreal in 2015, following significant rewrites. Also with lyrics by Spencer, Menken's Weird Romance appeared on the WPA Theatre in 1992. A Christmas Carol, Menken's musical based on Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol, performed by Lynn Ahrens and book by Mike Ockrent, opened in 1994 at the Madison Square Garden's Paramount Theater. The exhibit was a hit at the annual New York holiday festival, and it was an annual event.

Walt Disney Studios recruited Little Shop of Horrors, Menken, and Ashman to write the lyrics for The Little Mermaid (1989). The challenge was to create an animated musical film of this Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale that might have appeared in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella. The Little Mermaid launched a new Disney period, the Disney Renaissance, in both academic and commercial terms, and herded the dawn of a new Disney age. They earned their first Oscar nomination for the song "Under the Sea." Menken also received the 1989 Academy Award for Best Score.

Beauty and the Beast of Menken and Ashman received three 1991 Oscar nominations for Best Song, winning for its title song. Menken received his second Oscar for Best Score. At the time of Ashman's death in 1991, the two were on Aladdin. Only three songs were in the film, and Menken collaborated with Tim Rice, who was then working on The Lion King, to write the remainder of the songs. "A Whole New World" was nominated for Best Song in 1992. Menken was also named Best Score in the Oscar competition. Newsies, Menken's live action musical film with lyrics by Jack Feldman, was released in 1992.

Three more animated musical films were released. For Pocahontas, Menken collaborated with Stephen Schwartz, for which the two actors received two Oscar honors: Best Song and Best Musical or Comedy Score. The songs for The Hunchback of Notre Dame were written by the same musical team in 1996, as well as Menken, the score. In 1997, Menken met with his old collaborator, David Zippel, for his last film in the series Hercules.

Menken also wrote the Michael J.'s music. Life with Mikey (1993), the holiday film Noel (2004) and Mirror Mirror (2012). Home on the Range (2004), Tim Allen's remake of The Shaggy Dog (2006), Enchanted (2007), and Tangled (2010) were among his other film scores for Disney.

In March 2017, Disney produced a live-action version of Beauty and the Beast starring Bill Condon, with the songs from 1991 and new material by Menken and Rice. Menken co-produced new songs for Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's 2019 live-action Aladdin, directed by Guy Ritchie.

Menken is also working on new music for a live-action film version of The Little Mermaid starring Rob Marshall, as Miranda went to the same school as Menken's niece Lin-Manuel Miranda, who Menken knew well before the former's childhood. Menken will also be collaborating with Stephen Schwartz on Disenchanted, the sequel to Enchanted, and a version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which Menken will also perform. Menken is now working with former Disney chief creative officer John Lasseter on a Skydance Animation project. The Spellbound project, which was announced by Vicky Jenson on May 20, 2020, was confirmed to be Spellbound by Vicky Jenson. Menken will co-write songs for Spellbound with Glenn Slater, who appeared on Home on the Range and Tangled. Menken is also attributed to a sequel to Aladdin, according to reports.

With eight Academy Awards, only composer Alfred Newman (nine winners), art director Cedric Gibbons (11 wins), and Walt Disney (22 wins) received more Oscar awards than Menken. He is tied for fourth place with late costume designer Edith Head, and currently holds the most awards for a living person.

Menken opened in 1994 and ran for 13 years before closing in 2007. He worked with lyricist Tim Rice on a musical, King David, based on the biblical story, which was performed in a concert version at the New Amsterdam Theatre in 1997. From 2003 to 2004, Little Shop of Horrors performed on Broadway.

He made the stage version of The Little Mermaid, which appeared on Broadway from 2008 to 2009 and for which he was first nominated for the Tony Award for Best Score. Brother Act's stage performance premiered in London in 2009 and then opened on Broadway in 2011. He was nominated for yet another Tony Award for Best Score. In 2010, Menken was recognized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as a guest star. He appeared on the NPR quiz show Wait Wait! Don't Tell Me! in December 2010.

Menken received a Tony Award for his musical adaptation of Newsies, which ran from 2012 to 2014. He also wrote the lyrics for Leap of Faith, which had a brief run on Broadway in 2012. Aladdin's stage version debuted on Broadway in 2014, earning him another Tony Award for Best Score. In 2013, he attended the annual Junior Theatre Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, and was honoured with the Junior Theater Festival Award. When speaking about his creative process, he held a concert that featured music from various projects.

In 2014, Menken's stage adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame appeared at La Jolla Playhouse, California. In Montreal in 2015, Duddy Kravitz's Apprenticeship was revived, and A Bronx Tale: The Musical appeared at the Paper Mill Playhouse in 2016. Menken is currently working on stage musical adaptations of Night at the Museum and Animal Farm.

Menken is reunited with his Newsies creators Jack Feldman and Harvey Fierstein to produce Greetings from Niagara Falls as of 2019. In January 2019, a reading was held; however, there is no information on the project's future.

Menken and Howard Ashman wrote songs for the popular puppet TV show Sesame Street from 1989 to 1990. Menken said that his Sesame Street jobs were "pathetic money," but that it also had some prestige. It was on television, and [he] was getting some royalties." For the 1990 animated anti-drug revival Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, the pair wrote a song titled "Wonderful Ways to Say No."

Menken co-composed the score for the musical television series Galavant with Christopher Lennertz in 2015, reuniting him with Tangled screenwriter Dan Fogelman. Menken also co-wrote songs for the series with Glenn Slater. The series lasted two seasons, first airing on January 4, 2015 and then ending on January 31, 2016. Menken and Slater returned in 2017 to write songs for Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, which is based on Tangled's events. After three seasons, the series came to an end in 2020. For the song "Waiting in the Wings," Menken and Slater received the Daytime Emmy Award for Original Song in a Children's, Young Adult, or Animated Program on July 26, 2020.

Menken wrote songs for a potential prequel/spin-off series to Beauty and the Beast, Little Town, which would be centered on Gaston and LeFou. On Disney's subscription service, Disney+, the series will be released, and Menken will also be a producer on the series. It was announced in February 2022 that the series would not continue for now.

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