Menken has collaborated with such lyricists as Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, Stephen Schwartz and David Zippel. With eight Academy Award wins (four each for Best Score and Best Song), Menken is the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, who has nine Oscars. He has also won eleven Grammy Awards, a Tony Award and other honors.\n', '

Alan Irwin Menken was born on July 22, 1949, at French Hospital in New York City, 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 9, at the New York Federation of Music Clubs Junior Composers Contest, his original composition "Bouree" was rated Superior and Excellent by the judges.\n', '

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. He graduated with a degree in Musicology in 1971 from the university\'s Steinhardt School. 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." 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." After college, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.\n', '

Return to Alan Menken Autograph Profile