The extraordinary composer Alan Menken has written many scores for Walt Disney films. He has won Academy Awards for his scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas earning him the second highest number of Oscars in the music category with eight. He has also composed scores for Home on the Range, The Shaggy Dog, Enchanted, Tangled, and Mirror Mirror. In 2001 he was named a Disney Legend and nine years later in 2010 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Disney’s man of the musical masterpiece was born in New York City. He developed an interest in music at an early age with preferences for Beethoven and Brahms, then new folk, then rock ‘n roll which led to mixing it all together. While studying piano and violin as a child Menken has stated that he did not like practicing piano so he’d make up his own version to songs, paving the way for his career as a talented composer. During his college years he originally studied pre-med before changing his major to focus on music at New York University Steinhardt School. Following that, he attended BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.

In the late 1970s he wrote several shows that unfortunately were not produced. He performed his own material in local clubs, composed jingles and songs, and worked as an accompanist for ballet classes, and did musical directing for other people’s shows. Menken realized he enjoyed the challenge of writing for characters and adapting stories leading to his work with Howard Ashman on the Off-Broadway production of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater the adaptation of one of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. Three years later he worked on Little Shop of Horrors, also with Ashman which earned him a nomination for a Drama Desk Award. In 1983 he received the BMI Career Achievement Award for his work on several productions including Real Life Funnies, Atina: Evil Queen of the Galaxy, and Patch, Patch, Patch, as well as the previously mentioned shows.

Menken made a splash with Disney in 1989 with his work on The Little Mermaid, earning him his first Academy Award. He cranked out hit after hit, composing the music for Beauty and the Beast in 1991, Aladdin the following year, and Pocahontas two years later. Continuing his stage work, in 1994 his show Weird Romance was performed at WPA Theatre and two years later his musical based on A Christmas Carol debuted at the Paramount Theater. That same year he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and a Tony for the music to the stage show of Beauty and the Beast. Continuing to crank out hits for Disney, he composed The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1996 and Hercules the following year. His more recent hits have been the soundtrack for Home on the Range, a TV movie based on his adaption of A Christmas Carol, and Menken’s most recent Oscar nomination was in 2011 for Tangled.