Alan Menken

Alan Irwin Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American composer and conductor. Over his career he has received numerous accolades including winning eight Academy Awards, a Tony Award, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Daytime Emmy Award. He is one of 21 recipients to have won the competitive EGOT (Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony).

He is best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Menken's contributions to The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) won him two Academy Awards for each film. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), Disenchanted (2022), and Spellbound (2024), among others.

He is also known for his work in musical theater for Broadway winning the Tony Award for Best Original Score for Newsies (2012). He was Tony-nominated for Beauty and the Beast (1993), The Little Mermaid (2008), Sister Act (2009), and Aladdin (2014). His other stage hits include Little Shop of Horrors (1982), A Christmas Carol (1994), Leap of Faith (2012), and A Bronx Tale (2016).

Menken has collaborated with lyricists such as Howard Ashman, Jack Feldman, Tim Rice, Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Schwartz, David Zippel, Glenn Slater, Benj Pasek and 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.

Menken recalled: "First, I was pre-med. I thought I'd be a dentist like my dad. Finally, I got a degree in music, but I didn't care about musicology. It wasn't until I joined BMI Workshop ... under Lehman Engel, and walked into a room with other composers that I knew this was it."