Jeff Lunden Jeff Lunden
Jeff Lunden
Stories By

Jeff Lunden

Jeff Lunden

Freelance Contributor

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.

Story Archive

Thursday

Actor Topol, who appeared in 'Fiddler on the Roof' hundreds of times, has died

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Saturday

Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan star in a rarely revived Lorraine Hansberry play. Catalina Kulczar/Brooklyn Academy of Music hide caption

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Catalina Kulczar/Brooklyn Academy of Music

A rarely revived Lorraine Hansberry play is here — and it's messy but powerful

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Wednesday

Encore: Look out, Nets rivals! Octogenarian Mr. Whammy is coming for you

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Saturday

Bruce Reznick, known as "Mr. Whammy" at a Nets game earlier this month. Brooklyn Nets hide caption

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Brooklyn Nets

Look out, Nets rivals! Octogenarian Mr. Whammy is coming for you

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Sunday

Trade, created by Emma O'Halloran and Mark O'Halloran, will be featured at the PROTOTYPE festival this year. Maria Baranova/Unison Media hide caption

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Maria Baranova/Unison Media

Who says opera needs a grand stage? This festival is all about intimate productions

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Monday

Tuesday

Kelli O'Hara as Laura Brown, Renée Fleming as Clarissa Vaughan, and Joyce DiDonato as Virginia Woolf in Kevin Puts's "The Hours." Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera hide caption

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Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera

Three superstar divas power opera 'The Hours' - coming to movie theaters everywhere.

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Friday

Encore: At The Museum of Broadway, people learn what it takes to make a show

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Saturday

The Wiz is just one of the shows celebrated in the new Museum of Broadway. Monique Carboni/Museum of Broadway hide caption

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Monique Carboni/Museum of Broadway

The Museum of Broadway reveals the show behind the show

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Monday

Sunday

Saturday

The company of this production of 1776 is multi-racial and trans, female and nonbinary. Joan Marcus/Roundabout Theatre Company hide caption

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Joan Marcus/Roundabout Theatre Company

In the Broadway musical '1776,' the revolution is in the casting

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Tuesday

Angela Lansbury's acting career extended over an extraordinary seven decades. She is pictured above in Los Angeles in 2014. Casey Curry/Invision/AP hide caption

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Casey Curry/Invision/AP

Angela Lansbury, a beloved star of the screen and stage, has died at 96

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Friday

The new interior of David Geffen Hall, during a New York Philharmonic tuning session. Michael Moran/New York Philharmonic hide caption

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Michael Moran/New York Philharmonic

Stripped to the bones: Why a new NYC concert hall sounds so much better

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Wednesday

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Charles Fuller dies at 83

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Saturday

Playwright Tom Stoppard was in his 50s when he learned of his Jewish heritage. Almost 20 years after that discovery, he engages with with his family history and identity in the play Leopoldstadt. Joan Marcus hide caption

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Joan Marcus

Tom Stoppard brings his Jewish identity to the stage – decades after he learned of it

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Thursday

The Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2016. Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe/Getty Images hide caption

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Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe/Getty Images

Where are the Black musicians in the country's largest orchestras?

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Wednesday

The Broadway community is celebrating another year of pandemic survival

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Thursday

Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green, co-authors of Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers Courtesy of the Rodgers-Beaty-Guettel family; Earl Wilson/New York Times hide caption

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Courtesy of the Rodgers-Beaty-Guettel family; Earl Wilson/New York Times

Published 8 years after her death, Mary Rodgers' memoir is a true tell-all book

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Wednesday

Friday

Joshua Henry (left) and Gavin Creel in Into the Woods. Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman hide caption

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Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

'Into the Woods' returns to Broadway

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Wednesday

Amir Arison (left) and Eris Sirakian in The Kite Runner. Joan Marcus hide caption

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Joan Marcus

'The Kite Runner' brings life in Afghanistan to Broadway

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Sunday

The villainous King Richard III will be played by a woman in Shakespeare in the Park

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