Take a Magic Carpet Ride Through Alan Menken's Aladdin Score for its 10th Anniversary on Broadway
As a young child forced to endure the drudgery of piano practice, Alan Menken got bored playing other people's music. Instead he would fake it, absorbing and then imitating the characteristics of a Bach fugue or a Chopin sonata. Thankfully, his music teachers recognized and encouraged the creativity. Menken grew up to be a composer with an extraordinary, chameleonic knack for pastiche"on top of a unique gift for irr…