This is the mystery of Jeanine Tesori – basically any composer for the theater. Where does the music come from, and how does it work its magic? A non-verbal language with the power to move us, sometimes literally, music can be linked to words and characters in ways that feel final and enlightening. As Lindsay-Abaire put it, “I don’t know if pure is the right word, but a little less diluted. You hear the emotions of the characters and know what goes on in those heads and hearts,” dramatic content that in non-musical plays “you rely on the actors to communicate.”
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George Brant, with whom Tesori is editing his play about a female drone pilot, “Grounded,” for the Metropolitan Opera, said Tesori “is able to fathom the innards of the piece and transform it into something that is still feels like itself, but more.”
The question of the narrative power of music is raised in Tesori’s case because, unlike Sondheim or many of her contemporaries (Jason Robert Brown, Michael John LaChiusa, Adam Guettel), she does not write lyrics. Instead, she has worked with playwrights to shape not only her show’s scripts, but invigorating original songs, in idioms and character voices as broad as the musical genres she references.
Lin-Manuel Miranda looked at her list of collaborators and said, “It’s like she’s made it a mission to get any serious playwright to swim in the musical theater pool. But the other side of that is that she bends their skills to our art form and renews our art form with every at bat.
“That’s how you know she’s the best,” he added, “because she works with the best and makes them sing.”
It’s not like she’s cookie-cutter style, though. As Lindsay-Abaire said, “The fact that the lyrics are all so different — that Tony’s are Tony’s, Lisa’s are Lisa’s, mine are mine – is proof that Jeanine embraces her collaborators and our voices. It’s not like: that’s how Jeanine teaches all those playwrights to write song lyrics.”
For her part, Tesori – who recently turned 60 but maintains a youthful bonhomie, with ‘Fun Home’ wallpaper patterns tattooed on her forearm – has a firm grasp on what her strengths are.
“I’m not a lyricist at all, but I’ll tell you what my gift is: recognizing lyrics in the sea of words,” Tesori explained during a recent interview in her City Center office, where she serves as a creative consultant. She immerses herself in the verbiage of her employees in various ways. She asks for what she calls “noodles,” which Kron described as “bits of lyrics that didn’t make it into the lyrics I made for her.” Tesori also has them read their lyrics aloud, sometimes “two or three times,” as Kron recalled, to get the intention out of inflection.