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21. Jeanine Tesori
- University of Illinois Press
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21 Jeanine tesori Jeanine Tesori, like Deborah Lurie, considers herself both a composer and a collaborator . Most known for her music in live stage productions, Tesori’s celebrated scores include Shrek the Musical, Caroline or Change, Thoroughly Modern Millie , Twelfth Night, and Violet. During our conversation, Tesori openly discusses motherhood and the choices she continues to face as an active composer and a mother. Born in 1961 to parents in the medical profession and growing up on Long Island, Tesori was raised in a household enriched by science and music. She began her young-adult life intending to enroll in medical school but was introduced to musical theater as a possible career when she worked summers as an accompanist for the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Camp. After graduating 372 . chapter 21 from Barnard, Tesori spent several years in New York as a pianist, arranger, and conductor of musical theater on and off Broadway. Tesori was prepared for this career shift thanks to a progressive piano teacher who taught her early on that “music is music”—that musical style does not automatically determine worthiness. Tesori learned classical technique and transposed music on the keyboard as common practice, a skill whose value became apparent when it helped her become a marketable accompanist and arranger in her early days on the theater scene. Like other commercial or media composers, such as Laura Karpman, Lurie, and Winifred Phillips, Tesori has always participated in various projects of music making. For instance, in addition to composing, she worked as associate conductor for such shows as The Secret Garden and The Who’s Tommy and wrote arrangements for dance numbers in several shows, including the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Tesori embraces challenges, having decided early in her career that she would stop talking about writing music and actually write it. She left a flourishing career as an accompanist and arranger, bought the rights to a story, and wrote her first full musical, Violet, in collaboration with Brian Crawley. Produced off-Broadway in 1997, Violet was nominated for seven Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding New Musical. It won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, and an Obie special citation for Tesori’s music. Discussing the business of her profession, Tesori explains how she balances commercial works such as Shrek with less commercial projects such as Twelfth Night and Caroline, or Change, the latter a collaboration with the playwright Tony Kushner. Her work with Kushner continues; they premiered a new one-act opera, A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck, for the Glimmerglass Festival and work toward an outstanding commission from the Metropolitan Opera. Tesori thrives in the collaborative process and considers each new partnership a “marriage” of styles, working lives, working habits, and conversations. She explains that composition is an isolating process, and so she loves the interaction of working with others. At the same time, she describes the enormity of the collaborative process that brings any musical to fruition. This process has earned Tesori several TonyAwardnominationsforherscoresShrek,Millie,Caroline,andTwelfthNight.In fact, Caroline opened before the end of Millie’s run, making Tesori the first woman composer to have two new musicals running concurrently on Broadway. She has composed for other media, including music for the films Show Business: The Road to Broadway, Nights in Rodanthe, Wrestling with Angels (the 2006 documentary about Tony Kushner), and Shrek the Third, as well as writing new songs for several animated Disney videos. Tesori’s current projects include a collaboration with the playwrightLisaKrontobringAlisonBechdel’sgraphicnovelFunHome tothestage. *** [54.225.35.224] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:00 GMT) JeAnIne teSOrI · 373 July 2010, at her home in new York City JENNIFER KELLY: How did you transition from a pre-med student in college to a life in musical theater? JEANINE TESORI: Music was a given in our family. I had started playing the piano by ear when I was quite young, and then I began formal lessons at five or six. Music had been a part of my life forever and a part of my sisters’ lives. Also, my dad was a doctor, and my mother was a nurse. His office was in our home, so we all knew words like “hemostat” immediately. A couple of us may have gone into the sciences somewhat blindly, without realizing the relationship between music and science. Halfway through college, I began questioning my chosen science path. But I didn’t even...