Well, in a way. [Laughs] After a while, I feel like I’ve become a workaholic.
Do you enjoy revisiting old works, or do you do it out of self-preservation?
A little bit of both. These are my babies – I don’t want to leave them. Sometimes I think, “What more do I need to say to tell this story?” And then I’m tasked with getting to know the director and screenwriters and discussing what they want to add. That’s what makes it fun for me.
What was it like working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on the new song for The Little Mermaid?
It was a lot of fun. I knew him because he went to college. [Hunter College Elementary School] My niece and I always heard about this little boy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and how he got into The Little Mermaid.
Of the three songs we did together, one was me and Howard in the wheelhouse. “wild uncharted waters‘ This is a ballad sung by Prince Eric that’s swirling in his mind, and it’s very emotional. “first timeThe “” that Ariel sings when she walks in about everything she notices for the first time is a real mix of our styles. When I gave Lynn a piece of the original animated film score, he said, “Wait, can I put a 2 for a 3?” [referring to the tempo]So we got a really rhythmic friction. And what was even more important in Lynn’s wheelhouse was:scuttle bat‘ is sung by Scuttle and Sebastian. [played by Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs]. I gave him a little Caribbean song, thinking he might turn it into a lyric, and he actually rapped it. It was one of those moments where you feel someone’s brilliance.
In 1997, David Horn, currently executive producer of PBS’s “Great Performance” series, told the New York Times“When there’s a Sondheim musical, everybody calls it a Sondheim musical. What Alan did, they call it a Disney musical.” do you still care?
Before I went to Disney, “Little Shop of Horrors” was already a big hit, so I sometimes felt a little uncomfortable being simply characterized as “Disney composer Alan Menken.” . And while I was at Disney, I wrote a lot of other external projects. “A Christmas Carol” at Madison Square Garden. [nearly] 10 Years with Lynn Ahrens [stage shows] “Sister Act”, “Bronx Tales”, “Leap of Faith”, [the series] “Galavant” — but no musical opportunity on the level of writing a musical for Disney. If you do your job right, you’ll get an experience like no other.
