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Research Paper On Alan Menken

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Alan Menken, a famous Composer, Actor, and Artist, was born on July 22,1949 in New Rochelle, New York. Alan received a taste of the music life from the start, his mother, Judy Menken, was a young actress/playwright and his father, Norman Menken, DDS, was a piano playing dentist (Biography Comments 1). His whole family loved Broadway musicals and they spent many nights together just listening to his father play piano, Alan once said, “I showed an interest in piano at a very young age, but I hated to practice, so when my parents left the room I 'd make up my own version of the piece. That 's how I started composing” (The Whole New World of Alan Menken 1). Menken lived a very happy and prosperous childhood at home with his sisters Faye and Leah until 1966 when he moved out to attend college. He attended New York University’s College of Arts and Sciences with a Musicology degree, and was admitted into the BMI Musical Theater Workshop, where he wrote small musicals for them but would also sneak away to the piano room and compose songs that he kept to himself. In 1968 he wrote his first musical, Separate Ways, for NYU. (Biography Comments 1). When Menken graduated from NYU, he wrote a few musicals for The Downtown Ballet Company that were not very successful, but he considers it one of the best moments of his life because it is where he met a ballet dancer who eventually became his wife of forty-four years, Janis Roswick. Still working for the Musical Theater Workshop, Menken

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