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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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Theater
3:47 am
Tue January 8, 2013

A Vet's Haunted Homecoming In 'Water By The Spoonful'

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Liza Colon-Zayas plays a troubled character named Odessa Ortiz, who finds her better self online. She's pictured above with Bill Heck, as Fountainhead.
Credit Richard Termine /
Quiara Alegria Hudes' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, <em>Water by the Spoonful,</em> opens off-Broadway on Tuesday. Above, Bill Heck as Fountainhead and Frankie R. Faison as Chutes & Ladders in the play, directed by Davis McCallum.
Credit Richard Termine /
Armando Riesco's character Elliot was inspired by Hudes' cousin, also named Elliot. Riesco has played Elliot throughout the trilogy. He's pictured above in <em>Water by the Spoonful</em> with Zabryna Guevara, who plays Yazmin Ortiz.
Credit Richard Termine /
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Originally published on Tue January 8, 2013 6:06 am

The cliche about writers is they should write what they know, and that old saw has certainly worked for Quiara Alegria Hudes. The 35-year-old playwright has mined her Puerto Rican family's stories into a series of plays, a musical and even a children's book. Now, her Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Water by the Spoonful, is being brought to life in the first New York production of the play, opening off-Broadway on Tuesday evening.

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Deceptive Cadence
3:29 am
Thu December 6, 2012

Anonymous 4 Marks A Milestone Year, Together And Alone

To mark the group's 25th anniversary, Anonymous 4 commissioned the new piece <em>love fail</em> from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang.
Credit Chris Carroll / Brooklyn Academy of Music
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Originally published on Thu December 6, 2012 9:05 am

As of this year, the vocal group Anonymous 4 has been introducing modern audiences to medieval music for a quarter century. When the all-female quartet asked David Lang to help mark the occasion by writing them some music, he didn't need any convincing. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer was already a big fan.

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Deceptive Cadence
4:03 am
Fri November 30, 2012

The Peony Pavilion: A Vivid Dream In A Garden

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A garden serves as the stage in the opera.
Credit Zhang Yi
Characters Du Liniang (left) with her love, Liu Mengmei, in a 2010 production of <em>Peony Pavillion</em>.
Credit Zhang Yi
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Originally published on Fri November 30, 2012 9:43 pm

The Peony Pavilion is one of China's most famous operas, but uncut performances of this romantic 16th century work can take more than 22 hours. Chinese composer Tan Dun, who's best known for his Academy Award-winning score for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has adapted the work into a compact 75 minutes.

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Deceptive Cadence
12:00 am
Sat November 10, 2012

John Williams' Inevitable Themes

Flanked by composer Leonard Slatkin and soprano Jessye Norman, John Williams takes a bow during his 80th-birthday celebration at Tanglewood in August.
Credit Stu Rosner
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Originally published on Thu November 15, 2012 10:52 am

For more than 50 years, John Williams' music has taken us to galaxies far, far away through adventures here on earth, made us feel giddy joy and occasionally scared us to death.

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Deceptive Cadence
2:03 am
Thu October 18, 2012

Philadelphia Orchestra Reboots With New Music Director

Yannick Nezet-Seguin leads the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Credit Ryan Donnell
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Originally published on Thu October 18, 2012 12:11 pm

Everywhere you look right now, it seems like American symphony orchestras are fighting for their lives — strikes, lockouts, bankruptcy. Perhaps the biggest example is the world-renowned Philadelphia Orchestra, which is just coming out of its own bankruptcy. Tonight, its new 37-year-old music director takes the podium as the venerable orchestra begins a reboot.

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Deceptive Cadence
4:06 pm
Wed October 10, 2012

During Lockout Season, Orchestra Musicians Grapple With Their Future

The Minnesota Orchestra is one of many orchestras around the country dealing with labor disputes.
Credit Greg Helgeson
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Originally published on Thu October 11, 2012 1:05 pm

It's been a tumultuous time for American orchestras. Labor disputes have shut down the Minnesota Orchestra and Indianapolis Symphony, and strikes and lockouts have affected orchestras in Chicago, Atlanta and Louisville in the past year.

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Theater
3:33 pm
Tue September 18, 2012

Shorts Inspire Music In 'Sounding Beckett' Trilogy

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In <em>Ohio Impromptu,</em> one of three short plays featured in <em>Sounding Beckett,</em> the silent character (Philip Goodwin, left, with Ted van Griethuysen) inspired music based on knocks and repetitions.
Credit Jeremy Tressler / Sounding Beckett
Guitar plinks represent May (Holly Twyford) pacing the floor in the music based on Beckett's <em>Footfalls.</em>
Credit Jeremy Tressler / Sounding Beckett
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Originally published on Tue September 18, 2012 7:09 pm

It all began last year, when the Library of Congress presented Samuel Beckett's Ohio Impromptu alongside a piece of music by composer Dina Koston, which responded to the text. A New York group, the Cygnus Ensemble, played the music, while Washington, D.C., director Joy Zinoman staged the play, for one night only.

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Deceptive Cadence
6:39 am
Sat August 4, 2012

Gathering Of The Viols: The 50th Annual Viola Da Gamba Conclave

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Jack Ashworth, Tina Chancey, Lisa Terry and Phillip Serna perform Sunday during the closing banquet of the weeklong conclave at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del.
Credit Scott Mason
A traditional carved head on an original, early 18th-century bass viol.
Credit Scott Mason
The carved head and peg box of an early 18th-century Baryton, a bass viol with additional metal strings that change the instrument's timbre.
Credit Scott Mason
A traditional carved head on an original, early 18th-century bass viol.
Credit Scott Mason
Credit Scott Mason
A carved lion head on an original, 18th-century bass viola da gamba made in Sweden, patterned after an English viol.
Credit Scott Mason
A consort of violas da gamba plays a fantasia by Orlando Gibbons in the common area of Clayton Hall at the University of Delaware to welcome participants during conclave registration.
Credit Scott Mason
Zoe Weiss, a professional viol player from Boston, checks out the crowd before a performance of Sarah Mead's <em>The Ultimate Fantasy: Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis</em>.
Credit Scott Mason
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Originally published on Tue September 18, 2012 3:59 pm

Viola da gamba players are a special breed — a tiny subset in the already small world of early classical music. They rarely meet their own kind, but once a year they come together for a week in July at an annual jam session they call a conclave. Wendy Gillespie, who just finished her term as president of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, says attending the event is the highlight of her year.

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Remembrances
1:47 pm
Sun July 15, 2012

'Oklahoma!' Actress Celeste Holm Dies At 95

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Originally published on Sun July 15, 2012 6:10 pm

Academy Award-winning actress Celeste Holm has died. A star on both stage and screen, Holm was best known for roles in Gentleman's Agreement, All About Eve and Oklahoma! She was 95.

Holm died early Sunday morning in her Manhattan apartment with her husband, family and close friends by her side. She had been hospitalized a couple weeks ago following a fire in actor Robert De Niro's apartment in the same building.

If there was one role that put Holm on the map, it was as the coquettish Ado Annie, in the 1943 hit musical, Oklahoma!

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Deceptive Cadence
2:03 am
Sat July 14, 2012

Tanglewood: Celebrating Beethoven In The Backwoods For 75 Years

Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Boston Symphony play Beethoven in the opening night concert of the Tanglewood Festival's 75th anniversary.
Credit Hilary Scott / Boston Symphony
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Originally published on Tue September 18, 2012 4:22 pm

It now seems like a natural rite of summer — open-air classical music festivals where audiences can hear great music while picnicking under the stars. But 75 years ago, when the Boston Symphony first performed on a former estate called Tanglewood in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts, it was a novel idea.

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