Alan Menken Popular Books

Alan Menken Biography & Facts

Alan Irwin Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American composer, best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Skydance Animation. Menken's music for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) has 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), and Disenchanted (2022), among others. His accolades include winning eight Academy Awards — becoming the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman (who has 9 Oscars), a Tony Award, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Daytime Emmy Award. Menken is one of nineteen people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony ("an EGOT"). He is also known for his work in musical theater for Broadway and elsewhere. Some of these works 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 lyricists such as Muriel Robinson, David Zippel, Howard Ashman, Stephen Schwartz, David Crane, Seth Friedman, Marta Kauffman, Steve Brown, Tom Eyen, David Rogers, Dennis Green, David Spencer, Jack Feldman, Tim Rice, Lynn Ahrens, Glenn Slater, Chad Beguelin, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Ariel Shaffir, Kyle Hunter, Phil Johnston, Tom MacDougall, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. 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. 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." 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. Menken graduated in 1972 from University College of Arts and Science at the Heights campus, which is now the College of Arts and Science. After college, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. 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." Career Early career After graduating, Menken's plan was to become either a rock star or a recording artist. His interest in writing musicals increased when he joined the Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) Musical Theatre Workshop and was mentored by Lehman Engel. From 1974 to 1978, he showcased various BMI workshop works, such as Midnight, Apartment House (lyric by Muriel Robinson), Conversations with Pierre, Harry the Rat and Messiah on Mott Street (lyrics by David Zippel). According to Menken, during this period, he "worked as a ballet and modern dance accompanist, a musical director for club acts, a jingle writer, arranger, a songwriter for Sesame Street and a vocal coach". He performed his material at clubs like The Ballroom, Reno Sweeny and Tramps. In 1976, John Wilson reported for The New York Times that members of Engel's BMI Workshop began performing as part of the "Broadway at the Ballroom" series: "The opening workshop program ... featured Maury Yeston and Alan Menken, both playing their piano accompaniment and singing songs they have written for potential musicals." Wilson reviewed a performance at the Ballroom in 1977 where Menken accompanied a singer: "In the current cabaret world, a piano accompanist is no longer expected to merely play piano for a singer. More and more, pianists can be heard joining in vocally, harmonizing with the singer, creating a background of shouts and exclamations or even doing brief passages of solo singing." Menken contributed material to revues like New York's Back in Town, Big Apple Country, The Present Tense (1977), Real Life Funnies (Off-Broadway, 1981), Diamonds (Off-Broadway, 1984), and Personals (Off-Off-Broadway, 1985). His revue Patch, Patch, Patch ran at the West Bank Cafe in New York City in 1979 and featured Chip Zien. The New York Times reviewer Mel Gussow wrote: "The title song ... refers to a life's passage. According to Alan Menken ... after age 30 it is a downhill plunge." Menken wrote several shows that were not produced, including Atina, Evil Queen of the Galaxy (1980), with lyrics by Steve Brown. He also wrote The Thorn with lyrics by Brown, which was commissioned by Divine in 1980. This was a parody of the film The Rose, but they could not raise the money to have it produced. He collaborated with Howard Ashman in an uncompleted musical called Babe (c. 1981), with Tom Eyen in Kicks: The Showgirl Musical (1984), and with David Rogers in The Dream in Royal Street (c. 1981), which was an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Menken contributed music for the film The Line (1980), directed by Robert J. Siegel. Breakthrough years Menken finally achieved success as a composer when playwright Howard Ashman chose him and Engel to write the music for his musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. The musical opened in 1979 at the WPA Theater to excellent reviews and modest box office. It transferred after several months to the Off-Broadway Entermedia Theater, where it ran for an additional six weeks. Menken and Ashman wrote their next musical, Little Shop of Horrors, for a cast of only 9 performers, including a puppeteer. This musical is based on the 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors. It opened at WPA Theater in 1982 to warm reviews. It moved to the Off Broadway Orpheum Theatre in the East Village, Manhattan, where it ran for five years. The musical set the box-office record for highest grossing Off-Broadway show of all time. It toured around the world, won theater awards and was adapted as a 1986 musical film starring Rick Moranis that earned Menken and Ashman their first Oscar nomination for the song "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space". For his body of work in musical theatre, he was awarded the BMI Career Achievement Award in 1983. In 1987, Menken and lyricist David Spencer's adaptation The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, based on the 1959 novel of the s.... Discover the Alan Menken popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Alan Menken books.