Jeanine Tesori

Jeanine Tesori (born November 10, 1961, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson) is an American composer and musical arranger. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and five Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and 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.

Her major works include Fun Home, Caroline, or Change, Shrek The Musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Violet.

Her first foray into theatre was seeing Godspell Off-Broadway at the Promenade when she was fourteen. She said of the event that she felt "someplace where there's something happening, and I don't want to be anywhere else."

She is a graduate of Barnard College, with an initial major in pre-med but changing to music.

Tesori made her Broadway debut when she arranged the dance music for the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. 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, and arranged the music for the Johnny Mercer revue Dream, which she repeated with the 1998 revival of The Sound of Music and the 1999 revue Swing! She also served as associate conductor for the Broadway productions of The Secret Garden and The Who's Tommy.

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