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Alan Menken's New Doo-Wop For A Bronx Tale: The Musical

Alan Menken and A Bronx Tale musical artwork

A Bronx Tale: The Musical begins previews on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre tomorrow night. The new musical features a book by Academy Award nominee Chazz Palminteri, music by Oscar, Grammy, and Tony Award winner Alan Menken, and lyrics by Grammy Award winner and Oscar and Tony Award nominee Glenn Slater. The show is co-directed by two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro and four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks, with choreography by Tony nominee Sergio Trujillo.

Based on the one-man show written and performed by Chazz Palminteri that inspired the now classic film, this streetwise musical will takes the audience to the stoops of the Bronx in the 1960s—where a young man is caught between the father he loves and the mob boss he’d love to be. Featuring an original doo-wop score, this is a tale about respect, loyalty, love, and above all else: family.

The musical premiered at the Tony Award-winning Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ to critical and popular acclaim earlier this year and officially opens on Broadway on December 1st.

Alan Menken joins us.

With the late Howard Ashman, Alan Menken wrote the Off-Broadway shows God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Little Shop of Horrors. After the success of Little Shop, the pair became musically responsible for the first films classified as having been made during The Disney Renaissance -- including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. The two were working on Aladdin at the time of Ashman's death. Menken collaborated with Stephen Schwartz for Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In 1997, Menken reunited with an early collaborator, David Zippel, for Hercules.

His other film scores for Disney include Newsies, Home on the Range, Enchanted, and Tangled. For the stage he’s adapted his work on Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Newsies, Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Aladdin, and he’s written original scores for the stage adaptations of Sister Act, Leap of Faith -- and now, A Bronx Tale The Musical.

Sarah has been a public radio producer for over fifteen years. She grew up in Saranac Lake, New York where she worked part-time at Pendragon Theatre all through high school and college. She graduated from UAlbany in 2006 with a BA in English and started at WAMC a few weeks later as a part-time board-op in the control room. Through a series of offered and seized opportunities she is now the Senior Contributing Producer of The Roundtable and Producer of The Book Show. During the main thrust of the Covid-19 pandemic shut-down, Sarah hosted a live Instagram interview program "A Face for Radio Video Series." On it, Sarah spoke with actors, musicians, comedians, and artists about the creative activities they were accomplishing and/or missing.
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