Born: 10 November 1961, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Jeanine Levenson
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Jeanine Tesori (b. November 10, 1961, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson) is an American musical theatre composer, arranger, pianist, and conductor. She started her career in music working in New York as a pianist, arranger, and conductor in musical theatre on- and off-Broadway. Tesori made her Broadway debut when she arranged the dance music for the 1995 revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”. She also arranged the music for the Johnny Mercer revue “Dream”, and then for the 1998 revival of The Sound of Music and the 1999 revue “Swing!”. Composer’s first musical “Violet” (book and lyrics by Brian Crawley) was staged in 1997. J. Tesori’s major works in music theatre are “Fun Home” (book and lyrics by Lisa Kron), “Caroline, or Change” (book and lyrics by Tony Kushner), “Shrek The Musical”, “Thoroughly Modern Millie”, and “Violet”. In 2013 she became an artistic director of a concert series of Off-Broadway musicals, “Encores! Off-Center”. J. Tesori’s new musical, “Soft Power” (book by David Henry Hwang), was staged in 2018 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles and at the San Francisco’s Curran Theatre. Tesori has composed music for the films “Nights in Rodanthe”, “The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond”, “The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning”, “Shrek the Third”, “Mulan II”, and “The Emperor’s New Groove 2: Kronk’s New Groove”. She was nominated for five Tony Awards. As a composer and dramatist J. Tesori also 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”, and 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.
This bio is reproduced in full with kind permission from Wise Music Classical.
Jeanine Tesori is an award-winning composer of musical theatre and opera. Along with Missy Mazzoli, Tesori is one of the first female composers commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera.
Tesori’s operas include Blue (libretto by Tazewell Thompson) premiered in July 2019 at Glimmerglass Opera with future performances at Washington National Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera; A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck (libretto by Tony Kushner) premiered at Glimmerglass Opera in 2011; The Lion, The Unicorn and Me (libretto by J.D. McClatchy on the book by Jeanette Winterson) premiered at Washington National Opera in 2013; and the forthcoming Grounded (libretto by George Brant based on his play).
Best known for her musical theater works her award-winning catalog includes Fun Home (Tony Award, Pulitzer finalist); Caroline, or Change (Olivier Award); Violet; Shrek; Thoroughly Modern Millie; Twelfth Night; A Free Man of Color; and by The Public at Central Park: Mother Courage. She is currently the Supervising Vocal Producer for Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming film of West Side Story. She is also the founding Artistic Director of Encores! Off-Center, and a lecturer at Yale University.