About Alan Menken
Alan Irwin Menken is an American composer and conductor, best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Skydance Animation. Menken's contributions to The Little Mermaid , Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin , and Pocahontas won him two Academy Awards for each film. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors , Newsies , The Hunchback of Notre Dame , Hercules , Home on the Range , Enchanted , Tangled , Disenchanted , and Spellbound , among others. His accolades include winning eight Academy Awards — becoming the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman , a Tony Award, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Daytime Emmy Award. Menken is one of twenty-one people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony .
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 , A Christmas Carol , and Sister Act .
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.
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.
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