Jeanine Tesori
Born: 1961
BIOGRAPHY WORKS SOURCES
Jeanine Tesori is a two-time Tony Award winner and four-time Tony Award nominated composer of musical theatre, opera, and film, and a music arranger.
The first show she ever experienced while in school was an Off Broadway production of “Godspell.” She began her undergraduate studies at Barnard College in pre-medicine before changing her major to music.
Tesori’s musicals address a variety of important relevant topics:
Thoroughly Modern Millie: wanting to marry for money, not love
Violet: a disfigured young woman who takes a journey on a bus to find herself (received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award 1997)
Caroline: a black woman working for a Jewish family and her relationships with the family. (Played at the National Theater in London and won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical.)
Shrek: the outcast who finds love (Tesori later wrote songs for the movie version of the musical.)
Fun Home: sexuality
Soft power: a musical within a play that questions the East-West dynamic (think the opposite of The King and I)
Kimberly Akimbo: A girl who doesn’t fit in and has a disease that makes her age much faster
She was noted by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) as being “the first woman composer to have two new musicals running concurrently on Broadway.”
Her operas include A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck; The Lion (premiered at Washington National Opera in 2013), the Unicorn, and Me; and Blue, a poignant opera about race in current-day society. Tesori wrote the music for Blue with playwright Tazewell Thompson, and was inspired by James Baldwin’s “The fire next time.” Blue premiered at Glimmerglass Opera in 2019 with subsequent performances at Washington National Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera. It won the MCANA Award for Best New Opera.
Her opera Grounded, commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera, opened the house’s 2024-2025 season. Tesori is only the second woman composer (aside from Missy Mazzoli), to be commissioned by The Met Opera and the fourth woman to have her work performed there.
Tesori’s film scores include Nights in Rodanthe, Winds of Change, Show Business, and Wrestling With Angels.
In addition to her Tony Awards wins and nominations, she has won two Drama Desk awards and six nominations, and is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Tesori currently teaches music theater composition at Yale University and is the Founding Artistic Director of Encores! Off-Center at New York City Center. Her desire to see systemic change in the theater industry has prompted Tesori to co-found tall popPy, inc., an artist led organization aimed to change the landscape and correct the marginalization in theatre.
Tesori has one daughter, Siena, and lives in Manhattan.