Tag: Alan Menken

  • Ashman’s directions for “Something There”

    While writing the lyrics to songs in Beauty and the Beast, Howard Ashman’s health was deteriorating. The composer, Alan Menken, recalls: By a certain point, he wasn’t well enough to travel. Once Disney knew, they brought a lot of the production over to the east coast; he made it through all the last recording sessions.…

  • Part of Your World

    “Any Broadway musical would be lucky to include a single number this good.” — Janet Maslin, in The New York Times on Alan Menken/Howard Ashman’s “Part of Your World,” from The Little Mermaid.  Darryn King, “Alan Menken: The Man Who Relaunched Disney’s Fortunes with Songs,” The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 July, 2016. http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/alan-menken-the-man-who-relaunched-disneys-fortunes-with-hit-songs-20160714-gq5o6v.html. Accessed 16 July 2016.

  • Menken on the the strength of music

    “It’s like, why move to Florida if you don’t like the sun?” says Menken when I visit his home in North Salem, an hour out of New York. “Music is a viscerally powerful medium, both on a bodily level and on an emotional level. There are intellectual components about it, but its basic strength comes…