Jeanine Tesori is a composer of musical theatre, opera, and film. Her musicals include Kimberly Akimbo; Soft Power; Fun Home; Shrek The Musical; Caroline, or Change; Thoroughly Modern Millie; and Violet. She is a two-time recipient of the Tony Award for Best Score and a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and in 2015, she and Lisa Kron became the first all-woman team to win the Tony for Best Score of a Musical for Fun Home.
Her operas include A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck; The Lion, The Unicorn and Me; and Blue, which received the MCANA Award for Best New Opera. For her opera, Grounded, she became one of the first two women to be commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera - and the first woman in the 139-year history of the Met to open a season. Tesori also served as Supervising Vocal Producer on Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Tesori is the Founding Artistic Director of New York City Center’s Encores! Off-Center series and a lecturer in music at Yale University.
At MacDowell in 2025, she began working on a new piece with her beloved collaborator, Lisa Kron, as well as a new piece for the mezzo Emily D’Angelo. She also presented to the Monadnock community alongside Kron for MacDowell Downtown.
