roomthreeseventeen
Inaugural Dopey Challenge finisher
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2009
- Messages
- 8,756
Last night, DH and I attended the Encompass Theatres tribute to Alan Menken. Alan went through the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop a few years before my husband joined, so this was sort of old home week. When we got there, we briefly chatted with Mr. Menken, and Maury Yeston, Glenn Slater and Sheldon Harnick.
We got some interesting insights into whats coming up next for Disney movies and theatricals. We also got a brief glimpse of Angela Landsbury, who had unknowingly walked into the wrong party, and stayed a bit to hang out with Mr. Menken.
The program itself was stellar, with Broadway pros like Ron Raines, Titus Burgess, Karen Mason, Karen Ziemba and Kara Lindsay singing from Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Little Shop of Horrors, Newsies, Life with Mikey, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Leap of Faith. They also had an opera choir sing Go the Distance from Hercules, which was very moving, especially for me, training for my second marathon. My favorite would have to be Ron Raines singing If I Cant Love Her, which is such an underused and fantastic song.
At the end of the night, Mr. Menken did a medley of his own songs, including Sister Act, Enchanted and Beauty and the Beast. All of his collaborators told funny stories about working with Alan, and Jack Feldman even did a parody to one of the songs cut from Aladdin (but which you will hear a lot more about very soon.) Glenn Slater told an amazing story about how "I See The Light" was written, literally in front of a bunch of Disney execs.
Anyway, it was one of those amazing New York City nights where Im so blessed to be in the theatre community. Great fun.
Really dark picture of Maury Yeston, my DH and Alan Menken
We got some interesting insights into whats coming up next for Disney movies and theatricals. We also got a brief glimpse of Angela Landsbury, who had unknowingly walked into the wrong party, and stayed a bit to hang out with Mr. Menken.
The program itself was stellar, with Broadway pros like Ron Raines, Titus Burgess, Karen Mason, Karen Ziemba and Kara Lindsay singing from Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Little Shop of Horrors, Newsies, Life with Mikey, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Leap of Faith. They also had an opera choir sing Go the Distance from Hercules, which was very moving, especially for me, training for my second marathon. My favorite would have to be Ron Raines singing If I Cant Love Her, which is such an underused and fantastic song.
At the end of the night, Mr. Menken did a medley of his own songs, including Sister Act, Enchanted and Beauty and the Beast. All of his collaborators told funny stories about working with Alan, and Jack Feldman even did a parody to one of the songs cut from Aladdin (but which you will hear a lot more about very soon.) Glenn Slater told an amazing story about how "I See The Light" was written, literally in front of a bunch of Disney execs.
Anyway, it was one of those amazing New York City nights where Im so blessed to be in the theatre community. Great fun.
Really dark picture of Maury Yeston, my DH and Alan Menken
