Irene Sankoff
Born:
BIOGRAPHY WORKS SOURCES
If you’re familiar with the Broadway production Come from Away, you are familiar with Canadian born composer-lyricist Irene Sankoff. Brought up in Ontario, she and her partner, now her husband, David Hein, met at York University and moved to New York City after graduating in 1999. She studied acting and performed while he worked at a music studio in the city. They returned to Toronto and became involved in the Fringe Festival eventually presenting a play called My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding. It went on to successfully tour in Canada where it drew the attention of theater producer Michael Rubinoff. He suggested the idea of a show based on the stories of residents from the town of Gander, Newfoundland, the town where 7,000 airplane passengers were stranded following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Sankoff and Hein, while writing the book, words and music, became Canada’s most successful team with the successful Come From Away. They have won two Drama Desk awards for Come from Away including Outstanding Book of a Musical and Outstanding Lyrics, in 2017 and 2019 respectively. Other awards include a Tony award, 5 Outer Critic circle awards, 4 Helen Hayes awards, 4 Gypsy Rose Lee Awards,4 Los Angeles Drama Critic Awards, and 3 Toronto theater critic awards.
Their projects at the present time include Canada Nice a mini-musical commissioned by the government to celebrate Canadian’s many assets, Rollergirl based on a graphic novel and from a true novel written by Katie McKenna, How to get run over by a truck.
Sankoff’s degrees include a BA in Psychology and Creative Writing from York University and an MFA in Acting from Pace University. Honorary Doctorates in Human Letters from Pace and Memorial Universities were bestowed on Sankoff. She is very involved with children diagnosed on the autistic spectrum and is a civil and animal rights advocate. Her husband David Hein has written books, has a weekly radio show, several PBS documentaries and wrote Broadway to Main Street: How Show Tunes Enchanted America.
Tesori is a two-time Tony Award winner and four-time Tony Award nominated composer of musical theatre, opera, and film, and a music arranger.
The first show she ever experienced while in school was an Off Broadway production of “Godspell.” She began her undergraduate studies at Barnard College in pre-medicine before changing her major to music.
Tesori’s musicals address a variety of important relevant topics:
Thoroughly Modern Millie: wanting to marry for money, not love
Violet: a disfigured young woman who takes a journey on a bus to find herself (received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award 1997)
Caroline: a black woman working for a Jewish family and her relationships with the family. (Played at the National Theater in London and won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical.)
Shrek: the outcast who finds love (Tesori later wrote songs for the movie version of the musical.)
Fun Home: sexuality
Soft power: a musical within a play that questions the East-West dynamic (think the opposite of The King and I)
Kimberly Akimbo: A girl who doesn’t fit in and has a disease that makes her age much faster
She was noted by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) as being “the first woman composer to have two new musicals running concurrently on Broadway.”
Her operas include A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck; The Lion (premiered at Washington National Opera in 2013), the Unicorn, and Me; and Blue, a poignant opera about race in current-day society. Tesori wrote the music for Blue with playwright Tazewell Thompson, and was inspired by James Baldwin’s “The fire next time.” Blue premiered at Glimmerglass Opera in 2019 with subsequent performances at Washington National Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera. It won the MCANA Award for Best New Opera.
Her opera Grounded, commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera, opened the house’s 2024-2025 season. Tesori is only the second woman composer (aside from Missy Mazzoli), to be commissioned by The Met Opera and the fourth woman to have her work performed there.
Tesori’s film scores include Nights in Rodanthe, Winds of Change, Show Business, and Wrestling With Angels.
In addition to her Tony Awards wins and nominations, she has won two Drama Desk awards and six nominations, and is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Tesori currently teaches music theater composition at Yale University and is the Founding Artistic Director of Encores! Off-Center at New York City Center. Her desire to see systemic change in the theater industry has prompted Tesori to co-found tall popPy, inc., an artist led organization aimed to change the landscape and correct the marginalization in theatre.
Tesori has one daughter, Siena, and lives in Manhattan.