Alan Menken

Alan Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American composer best known for the songs and scores he wrote for Walt Disney Animation Studios during the Disney Renaissance and afterwards. His music for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and Pocahontas (1995) won him two Academy Awards for each film — eight Oscars in total — and his songs are heard daily in Disney theme parks around the world in attractions, shows and parades.

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Early life and early career

Alan Irwin Menken was born on July 22, 1949, in New York. He studied at New York University and worked in advertising jingles and musical theatre before his breakthrough partnership with lyricist and playwright Howard Ashman. Ashman chose Menken to collaborate on the 1979 stage adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and the pair then created Little Shop of Horrors, which opened Off-Broadway in 1982 and became a long-running hit. Menken also composed the songs for the 1986 film version of Little Shop of Horrors.

Disney Renaissance

On the strength of Little Shop of Horrors, Disney hired Menken and Ashman to write the music for The Little Mermaid (1989). The film revived the animated musical and won Menken Academy Awards for Best Original Score and for Best Original Song, "Under the Sea." The partnership's next film, Beauty and the Beast (1991), repeated the double win, for its score and for its title song, and became the first animated film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Ashman died in March 1991, during production of Beauty and the Beast and while the pair were working on Aladdin. Menken completed Aladdin (1992) with lyricist Tim Rice, and the film gave him his third pair of Oscars, for its score and for "A Whole New World." A fourth pair followed for Pocahontas (1995), written with lyricist Stephen Schwartz, for its score and for "Colors of the Wind." In all, Menken won eight Academy Awards from nineteen nominations, four for score and four for song, making him the second most prolific winner in the Academy's music categories after Alfred Newman.

Later Disney work

Menken continued as one of Disney's principal composers after the Renaissance, writing the scores and songs for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007) and Tangled (2010), and later returning for Disenchanted (2022). On stage, his Disney films became Broadway musicals, including Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Newsies — which won him his Tony Award — and Aladdin. He also contributed new songs, with Tim Rice, to the 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast and to the remakes of Aladdin and The Little Mermaid.

In 2020 Menken completed the EGOT — an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — when he won a Daytime Emmy Award for the song "Waiting in the Wings," written with Glenn Slater for Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure. His career totals include eight Academy Awards, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award, and he was named a Disney Legend alongside Ashman.

Work in the Disney parks

Menken's film music forms the basis of numerous park attractions and shows, including Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid, The Little Mermaid – Ariel's Undersea Adventure and Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage. His most notable original park composition is "Compass of Your Heart," the theme song written for Sindbad's Storybook Voyage at Tokyo DisneySea, the boat attraction in the park's Arabian Coast, where the song carries the voyage's story of following one's heart.

At Tokyo Disneyland, the music of Beauty and the Beast anchors Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast, which opened in 2020. The attraction's released soundtrack credits Menken with its new ride-through instrumental cues — including "Belle Meets the Beast," "Journey into the Castle" and the "Ride-Through Mix" — built around the songs he originally wrote with Ashman for the 1991 film.

See also

• Sindbad's Storybook Voyage
• Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast
• Tokyo DisneySea
• Tokyo Disneyland
• Walt Disney Imagineering