Jeanine Tesori’s music is well represented on record and streaming services. Still to come: Pentatone Records will release an album of her first full-length opera, “Blue,” in March, and “Kimberly Akimbo” is certain to record a cast album. For now here’s a very selective sampler of her wide-ranging work.
‘Lot’s Wife’
The near-operatic score for the musical tragedy “Caroline, or Change” culminates with this raging aria, in which the title character (currently being played by Sharon D Clarke on Broadway) pleads with God to rid her of the hate her miserable life has made her feel.
‘Telephone Wire’
The soaring “Ring of Keys” may be most beloved song from the graphic memoir adaptation “Fun Home.” But this number, in which adult Allison struggles to connect with her gay dad, is a master class in musical dramatization and lyrical compression.
‘Fuxing Park’
This key turning point from “Soft Power,” in which a Chinese American playwright is persuaded to write a Chinese musical about American democracy (it’s complicated), contains one of Tesori’s most haunting motifs: the 8-note melisma on the word “free,” which somehow conveys both struggle and flight.
‘Gimme Gimme’
For her Broadway debut, “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” Tesori and the lyricist Dick Scanlan crafted this infectious, old-school, 11 o’clock number, and in the process helped make Sutton Foster a star.
‘Feste’s Jam’
For Lincoln Center Theater’s 1998 production of “Twelfth Night,” directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Helen Hunt and Paul Rudd, Tesori composed a frolicsome, seductive score, which became a sort of calling card: It was this gig that brought her to the attention of Tony Kushner and George C. Wolfe for “Caroline, or Change.”
Discussion about this post