Alan Menken

Alan Menken, born in Manhattan on 22 July 1949, has written some of the most widely loved songs and scores of the past four decades. He took piano and violin lessons as a child and was composing by nine, when a piece called Bourrée won top marks at a junior composers' contest; he graduated from New Rochelle High School in 1967 and from New York University with a degree in musicology in 1971, then joined the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, the seedbed of a generation of Broadway writers. His partnership with the lyricist Howard Ashman produced Little Shop of Horrors and then the Disney renaissance — The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin — and later scores and stage musicals, Sister Act among them, kept the run going. With eight Academy Awards he has more Oscars than any living person, alongside Golden Globes, Grammys, Drama Desk Awards and a Tony. His musicology degree came from New York University's Steinhardt School, and beside Howard Ashman his lyricists have included Lynn Ahrens, Jack Feldman and Tim Rice.