Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson,[ (born November 10, 1961)][ "Awards and nominations" ibdb.com, accessed August 28, 2016] She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home (shared with Lisa Kron), making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo (shared with David Lindsay-Abaire).
Her major works include Kimberly Akimbo; Fun Home; Caroline, or Change; Shrek The Musical; Thoroughly Modern Millie; and Violet.
Early life and education
Tesori saw her first Off-Broadway production, Godspell at the Promenade, when she was fourteen. She said of the experience that she felt the sense of "I'm someplace where there's something happening, and I don't want to be anywhere else."
She attended Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, New York. She is a graduate of Barnard College of Columbia University,
Career
Tesori began her career as the substitute assistant conductor for the 1989 production of Gypsy. Tesori made her credited Broadway theatre debut as the dance arranger, associate conductor and keyboard player for The Secret Garden in 1991. Soon after, she was the associate conductor and played keyboard for the original production of The Who's Tommy, working with frequent collaborator, Des McAnuff. Tesori eventually music directed the German production of the musical, which she says gave her the courage to continue music directing. Tesori says she drew from her experience working on Tommy while writing Fun Home, and that it gave her the idea for how to bring her protagonist into her own story.
In 1997 she composed the score for the Off-Broadway musical Violet, for which she won an Obie Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical.
Tesori was asked to write the score for the 1998 production of Twelfth Night after being introduced to Nicholas Hytner by Ira Weitzman. Hytner heard her score for Violet and she asked her to write 60 minutes of music for the production, with 3 months to complete the score. Despite scores for plays not typically being nominated for best score at the Tony Awards, Thomas Cott ensured that people considered it, and Tesori was nominated in 1999. Next, Tesori wrote the arrangements for Swing!
Tesori has collaborated with Tony Kushner four times. In 2004 she supplied music for the sung-through musical Caroline, or Change, which garnered her a third Tony nomination for Best Original Score. In 2006 she wrote incidental music for Kushner's new translation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, which was produced as part of the 2006 Shakespeare in the Park season staged at the Delacorte Theater by The Public Theater.
Tesori has composed music for the films Nights in Rodanthe, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, , Shrek the Third, Mulan II, and .
Tesori wrote the music for Shrek The Musical, which opened on Broadway in 2008 and for which she earned both Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations for her music.
In 2011, she wrote the music to Fun Home with a book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, a musical based on Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. The show was overseen by Philip Himberg while being workshopped at the Sundance Institute's 2011 Theatre Lab at White Oaks Lab in Yulee, Florida. It was previously developed during the 2009 Ojai Playwrights Conference.
Tesori was the artistic director of a concert series of Off-Broadway musicals, "Encores! Off-Center". The July 2013 season included The Cradle Will Rock, I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road,
Tesori's opera The Lion, The Unicorn, and Me premiered with the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in December 2013. The libretto is by J. D. McClatchy, based on the children's book by Jeanette Winterson and was directed by Francesca Zambello.
The English version of three songs in the 2016 Tokyo DisneySea stage show Out of Shadowland were written by Tesori. They were sung in Japanese by pop singer Angela Aki.
With book and lyrics by David Henry Hwang, Tesori's new musical Soft Power began performances at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in May 2018 and at San Francisco's Curran Theatre in June.
In July 2019, she premiered her opera Blue, with libretto by Tazewell Thompson, at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York. The opera concerns the issue of African American boys having become a prime target of police brutality in the United States.
In December 2021, her new musical, Kimberly Akimbo, with book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire opened at the Linda Gross Theater in Manhattan. It won Best Musical at the Drama Desk Awards, Lucille Lortel Awards, and Outer Critics Circle Awards. It transferred to Broadway in fall 2022, with previews beginning on October 12, and an official opening on November 10. She and Lindsay-Abaire won the Tony Award for Best Original Score (making Tesori the first female composer to win that award twice)
In October 2023, Tesori's new opera Grounded opened at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
Personal life
She lives with her child, Siena, in Manhattan. Tesori is divorced from Siena’s father, Michael Rafter, an arranger and conductor.
Stage
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Violet (1997), a musical
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Twelfth Night (1998)
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The First Picture Show
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Thoroughly Modern Millie (2000)
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Caroline, or Change (2003)
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Mother Courage and Her Children (2006)
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Shrek The Musical (2008)
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A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck (2011)
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Fun Home (2013)
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The Lion, The Unicorn, and Me (2013)
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Soft Power (2018)
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Blue (2019), an opera
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Kimberly Akimbo (2021)
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Grounded (2023), an opera
Awards and nominations
Tony Awards
| +
!Year
!Award
!Show
!Result |
| 1999 | Best Original Score | Twelfth Night | |
| 2002 | Best Original Score (with Dick Scanlan) | Thoroughly Modern Millie | |
| 2004 | Best Original Score (with Tony Kushner) | Caroline, or Change | |
| 2009 | Best Original Score (with David Lindsay-Abaire) | Shrek the Musical | |
| 2015 | Best Original Score (with Lisa Kron) | Fun Home | |
| 2023 | Best Original Score (with David Lindsay-Abaire) | Kimberly Akimbo | |
Drama Desk Awards
| +
!Year
!Award
!Show
!Result |
| 1997 | Outstanding Music | Violet | |
| 1999 | Outstanding Music In A Play | Twelfth Night | |
| 2002 | Outstanding Music | Thoroughly Modern Millie | |
| 2004 | Caroline, or Change | |
| 2009 | Shrek the Musical | |
| 2014 | Fun Home | |
| 2020 | Soft Power | |
| 2022 | Kimberly Akimbo | |
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
| +
!Year
!Show
!Result |
| 2014 | Fun Home (with Lisa Kron) | |
| 2020 | Soft Power (with David Henry Hwang) | |
Grammy Award
| +
!Year
!Award
!Show
!Result |
| 2003 | Best Musical Theater Album | Thoroughly Modern Millie (Original Broadway Cast) | |
| 2010 | Shrek the Musical (Original Cast) | |
| 2021 | Soft Power (Original Cast) | |
| 2023 | Caroline, or Change (New Broadway Cast) | |
| 2024 | Kimberly Akimbo (Original Broadway Cast) | |
Further reading
External links
