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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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Deceptive Cadence
4:03 am
Fri November 30, 2012

The Peony Pavilion: A Vivid Dream In A Garden

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Credit Zhang Yi
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 Peony Pavillion.
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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

Credit Stu Rosner
Flanked by composer Leonard Slatkin and soprano Jessye Norman, John Williams takes a bow during his 80th-birthday celebration at Tanglewood in August.
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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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Theater
5:44 am
Sun October 28, 2012

Star-Studded 'Heiress' Considers A Woman's Worth

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Credit (c) 2012 Joan Marcus
Jessica Chastain makes her Broadway debut as Catherine Sloper in The Heiress. Chastain says she was moved by the arc of her character's story — initially defined by the men in her life, but ultimately finding strength in herself.
Credit (c) 2012 Joan Marcus
A revival of The Heiress, a 1947 play based on the Henry James novella Washington Square, opens at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York on Nov. 1. It stars (from left) Judith Ivey, Dan Stevens, David Strathairn and Jessica Chastain.
Credit (c) 2012 Joan Marcus
Dan Stevens — Matthew Crawley on the hit TV show Downton Abbey — plays Morris Townsend, Sloper's passionate but penniless suitor.
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Originally published on Sun October 28, 2012 10:58 am

A much-anticipated revival of The Heiress, a 1947 play based on the Henry James novella Washington Square, opens in New York on Thursday. It marks the Broadway debut of two accomplished young stars — Jessica Chastain, the Academy Award nominee from The Help, and Dan Stevens, from the hit television series Downton Abbey.

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Deceptive Cadence
2:03 am
Thu October 18, 2012

Philadelphia Orchestra Reboots With New Music Director

Credit Ryan Donnell
Yannick Nezet-Seguin leads the Philadelphia Orchestra.
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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

Credit Greg Helgeson
The Minnesota Orchestra is one of many orchestras around the country dealing with labor disputes.
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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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Credit Jeremy Tressler / Sounding Beckett
In Ohio Impromptu, one of three short plays featured in Sounding Beckett, 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 Footfalls.
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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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Credit Scott Mason
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 The Ultimate Fantasy: Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
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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

Credit Hilary Scott / Boston Symphony
Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Boston Symphony play Beethoven in the opening night concert of the Tanglewood Festival's 75th anniversary.
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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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Theater
3:23 am
Tue July 10, 2012

A One-Man Madhouse, With Murder On His Mind

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Credit Manuel Harlan / Lincoln Center
Alan Cumming plays Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo and many other characters in a one-man adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy set in a psychiatric ward. The show plays as part of the Lincoln Center Festival in New York through July 14.
Credit Manuel Harlan / Lincoln Center
Macbeth has been an obsession for Cumming since grade school. He made his professional debut in a Glasgow production at age 22.
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Originally published on Thu July 12, 2012 2:25 pm

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