Jeanine Tesori

Jeanine Tesori is one of the most versatile composers working in American theatre, moving between family comedy, intimate memoir, and opera. She has won the Tony Award for Best Original Score twice, for Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo. This page lists her shows in order and suggests where to start.

Who Jeanine Tesori is

Tesori was born in 1961 in Port Washington, New York, and studied music at Barnard College after starting out on a pre-med track. Before writing her own shows she worked in Broadway orchestra pits as a keyboard player, associate conductor, and dance arranger, on shows including The Secret Garden and The Who's Tommy.

She writes music, not lyrics, and has built long partnerships with her writers: Dick Scanlan on Thoroughly Modern Millie, Tony Kushner on Caroline, or Change, David Lindsay-Abaire on Shrek The Musical and Kimberly Akimbo, and Lisa Kron on Fun Home. Her style changes with each story. Violet draws on country, gospel, and blues, Millie is a tap-happy Jazz Age pastiche, Caroline, or Change is sung-through, and Fun Home is spare and conversational. What links them is a focus on outsiders and on characters, often girls and women, trying to understand their families.

Tesori's shows in order

Her first musical, Violet, written with Brian Crawley, opened Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 1997 and reached Broadway in 2014 with Sutton Foster. She wrote incidental music for Lincoln Center's Twelfth Night in 1998, then had her first Broadway hit with Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002), which won the Tony for Best Musical.

Caroline, or Change moved from the Public Theater to Broadway in 2004 and returned in a 2021 revival with Sharon D. Clarke. Shrek The Musical followed in 2008. Fun Home opened at the Public in 2013 and on Broadway in 2015, winning Best Musical. Soft Power, with David Henry Hwang, played the Public in 2019, and Kimberly Akimbo reached Broadway in 2022 and won Best Musical.

Tesori also writes opera, including A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck, Blue, and Grounded, which opened the Metropolitan Opera's 2024 season, the first time a woman composer had opened a Met season.

Legacy and where to start

Tesori's two Tony wins for Best Original Score came for Fun Home in 2015, shared with Lisa Kron as the first all-female writing team to win that award, and for Kimberly Akimbo in 2023, shared with David Lindsay-Abaire. Fun Home and Soft Power were both Pulitzer Prize finalists. She has also led the Encores! Off-Center concert series at New York City Center.

Families should start with Shrek The Musical, which is funny, warm, and widely licensed for school productions. Older students and adults will get the most from Fun Home, a short, moving show that rewards close listening. Kimberly Akimbo is a good next step, pairing big laughs with a quietly sad premise, and Caroline, or Change shows how far her musical range goes.

Jeanine Tesori: frequently asked questions

All Broadway composers