Alan Menken | |
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Born | New York, NY, U.S. |
July 22, 1949
Genres | Pop, musical theatre |
Occupations | Composer, songwriter, pianist, record producer[1], singer |
Instruments | Piano, keyboard |
Years active | 1980-present |
Labels | Disneyland, Walt Disney Records, Warner Bros. |
Alan Menken (born July 22, 1949) is a pianist and composer of American musical theatre and film.
Menken is best known for his scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Home on the Range, The Shaggy Dog, Enchanted, and most recently, Tangled. Menken has collaborated on several occasions with lyricists including Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, and Stephen Schwartz. With nineteen nominations and eight wins, Menken has won the third most Oscars of any person, after Walt Disney (twenty-two wins) and Alfred Newman (nine wins).
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Menken was born in New York, NY to a Jewish family, the son of Judith and Norman Menken, a dentist.[2] He developed an interest in music at an early age, studying piano and violin. He went to New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, New York. He attended college as a pre-med student, but later changed his focus to music at NYU Steinhardt. After college, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. He performed frequently in local clubs and worked as a composer of jingles and songs and as an accompanist.
In the late 1970s, Menken wrote several shows that were successfully showcased, but were not produced. Menken's first major professional work was with Ashman for the Off-Broadway 1979 WPA Theatre production of the play God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, an adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut novel. This was well received, but three years later, he achieved greater success with the 1982 Off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors, again with Ashman, for which he earned a Drama Desk Award nomination. Little Shop was adapted for a successful motion picture and later received a Broadway run.
In 1983, Menken received the BMI Career Achievement Award for his body of work for musical theater, including Little Shop of Horrors, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Real Life Funnies, Atina: Evil Queen of the Galaxy (produced in workshop as Battle of the Giants), Patch, Patch, Patch, and contributions to numerous revues including Personals and Diamonds. In 1987, a musical adaptation of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, with lyrics by David Spencer, was produced in Philadelphia. In 1992, the WPA Theatre produced Menken's Weird Romance, also with lyrics also by Spencer. Menken's 1994 musical based on the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and book by Mike Ockrent, debuted at Madison Square Garden's Paramount Theater. The show proved successful and is becoming an annual New York holiday event. Menken received both Tony Award and Drama Desk Award nominations for the music to the stage musical version of Beauty and the Beast which opened on Broadway in 1994.
Menken is best known, however, for his work over the past two decades with Walt Disney Pictures scoring numerous films, including Disney animated classics The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules and Home on the Range, and most recently, Disney's 2010 animated film Tangled. He also wrote music for the Disney live-action films Newsies (1992) and Enchanted (2007). Menken has received dual Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song on four of these projects. With eight Academy Award wins (four each for Best Original Score and Best Original Song), only composer Alfred Newman (nine wins) and Walt Disney (twenty two wins) have received more Oscars than Menken. He is tied in third place with late costume designer Edith Head. He currently holds the record for the most wins for a living person. He was named a Disney Legend in 2001.
A musical version of The Little Mermaid opened on Broadway in January 2008. Menken's Sister Act the Musical was produced in London, 2009, and opened on Broadway in Spring 2011. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Score for his work.[3]
Menken received the 2,422nd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 10, 2010.[4]
He is working on stage adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Newsies and Aladdin.[5]
In December 2010, he was a guest on NPR's new quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!.
Menken has eleven Grammy awards, including Song of the Year for 1993. [7]
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Ali (Arabic: علي, ʿAlī) is a male Arabic name derived from the Arabic root ʕ-l-w, which literally means "high" or "elevated". It is a common name in Arab countries and the rest of the Muslim world. Islamic traditional use of the name goes back to the Islamic leader Ali ibn Abi Talib but the name is identical in form and meaning to the Hebrew: עֵלִי , Eli, which goes back to the High Priest Eli in the biblical Books of Samuel.
The name Ali also arises in other traditions. Among English-speakers as short for male and female names starting with "Al-", or the Old Norse man's name Áli. It can also be an English nickname, as a shortened form of Alexandra, Alison, Alice, Alistair, or Alexander.
Ali is also a Finnish male given name, derived from Aleksanteri.
Cho Yong-Jin (Korean: 조용진), famously known as Ali (stylized as ALi), is a South Korean singer-songwriter famous for her work on Korean pop music in the early twenty-first century. Her stage name is a motif from Muhammad Ali. This is so that it can be engraved easily by the masses. Following her debut in 2009, she is primarily known for her strong vocals and her time as a contestant on the KBS program Immortal Songs 2.
Following her debut in 2009, she had already gained fame for her appearances on music shows, most notably Immortal Songs 2 on KBS2. She also worked as a professor in applied musical arts at the Seoul Technical Arts College.
ALi released her first album SOULri in December 2011 which was strangely two years after her official debut. One released track, "Na Young", garnered immediate controversy as its lyrics referenced a case of sexual assault that had been a very public case in South Korea, with many detractors criticizing the song to be insensitive to its subject. ALi would later address this controversy by revealing that she herself was a survivor of sexual assault.
This page is a comprehensive listing and detailing of the various characters who appear, from time to time, in the television series House. The list is divided episode-wise, as well as character-wise, and includes recurring characters, such as Dr. James Wilson, Cuddy, Foreman, Rachel Taub, and Dominika, as well as characters who appear in only a few episodes, such as Steve McQueen (the rat) and House's stalker, Ali.
They may offer you fortune and fame,
Love and money and instant acclaim.
But whatever they offer you,
Don't feed the plants!
They may offer you lots of cheap thrills,
Fancy discos in Beverly Hills.
But whatever they offer you,
Don't feed the plants!
Look out!
Here comes Audrey II.
Look out!
Here I come for you...
Here I come for you...
Here I come for you...
Here I come for you...
Hold you hat and hang on to your soul.
Something's comming to eat the world whole.
If we fight it we've still got a chance.
But whatever they offer you,
Though they're slopping the trough for you,
Please, whatever they offer you,
Don't feed the plants!