About

In addition to winning his second Tony Award for Best Score for Broadway’s “Titanic” (which won five Tonys including Best Musical), Yeston won a Tony Award and two Drama Desk Awards for his music and lyrics to Broadway’s “Nine” (based on Fellini’s “8 ½”). For all of the above he is a 3-time Grammy nominee.

That production won four additional Tonys, including Best Musical. The Broadway revival of “Nine”, starring Antonio Banderas, won the Tony Award for Best Musical Revival. Yeston’s contribution to the score for Broadway’s “Grand Hotel” was nominated for a Tony and two Drama Desk Awards, and Michael Grandage’s Donmar Warehouse London production of this show won the Olivier Award. His score for “Phantom” has received national and international acclaim and is currently in production across America, Europe and Asia. Yeston’s score to “Death Takes A Holiday”, with a Book by Peter Stone and Thomas Meehan, appeared Off Broadway in 2011 –and was nominated for 11 Drama Desk Awards, including Best Score and Best Musical and cited by Time Magazine as among the top 10 plays and musicals of 2011. His hit new musical Revue “Anything Can Happen In The Theater – The Musical World of Maury Yeston”, conceived and directed by Gerard Alessandrini, premiered in March 2020 at Manhattan’s York Theater Company. The film adaptation of “Nine”, directed by Rob Marshall features Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Dame Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Fergie, and Sophia Loren, with a screenplay by Anthony Minghella and Michael Tolkin, and was nominated for 5 Golden Globes and 4 Academy Awards. Yeston was nominated for a Critics Choice and Golden Globe for Best Original Song (“Cinema Italiano”) and an Academy Award for Best Original Song (“Take It All”). He also appears in the Documentary films “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy” and “Heart & Soul: The Life and Music of Frank Loesser”.

Yeston’s music and lyrics cover a wide variety of styles, from his Cello Concerto (premiered by Yo-Yo Ma) to the concept album “Goya—A Life In Song,” (featuring Placido Domingo and Gloria Estefan). The song “Till I Loved You,” from the “Goya” album became a Top 40 hit for Barbra Streisand.

When commissioned by Carnegie Hall to write a series of songs commemorating their centennial celebration, Yeston created the modern classical crossover song cycle “December Songs”, inspired by Schubert’s masterpiece “Die Winterreise”. Commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to create a grand work for the Millennium, he composed and orchestrated “An American Cantata – 2000 Voices” – a choral symphony in three movements for the National Symphony Orchestra and 2000 singers, conducted by Leonard Slatkin and premiering on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in July of 2000. In addition he has written numerous Chamber works including a Piano Sonata, and works for voice and piano.

BALLET: Yeston’s Ballet, Tom Sawyer”—A Ballet in Three Acts”, a symphonic work commissioned for the Kansas City Ballet to inaugurate Kansas City’s new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, was choreographed by William Whitener, with costumes by Holly Hynes. Alastair Macaulay’s NY Times rave review declared the piece historic, writing “this is the first all-new, entirely American three-act ballet: it is based on an American literary classic, has an original score by an American composer and was given its premiere by an American choreographer and company”.

PS Classics has recorded the December Songs for Voice and Orchestra - accompanied for the first time by a Full Orchestra of 37 – performed by the brilliant Victoria Clark, with new orchestrations by Larry Hochman, released in September of 2022. PS Classics has also released another new album - “Maury Sings Yeston, The Demos” (a compendium of 40 personal demos of many of his works). He is currently also writing a new musical in the grand tradition based on the story of the building of The Brooklyn Bridge, and an original musical based on the life of the Japanese Haiku poet Kobayashi Issa, scheduled for production in Tokyo in 2026.

A two-week Workshop of the new “CLUB MOSCOW - How To Lose A Democracy” with Thom Southerland and Danielle Tarento was presented in London in July, 2022. “CLUB MOSCOW”, a new sung-through musical, takes a ride through the first decade of Post-Soviet Union Russia during the wild-west chaotic 1990’s – a kleptocracy of oligarchs, mafiosi, and corruption. Through the eyes of a street musician is revealed a roller coaster of a society careening off the rails, drunk on democracy and greed, and ultimately to be shut down by Putin to be transformed into the unfree dictatorship that it has come to be.

A Revue showcasing his work, conceived and directed by Gerard Alessandrini - “Anything Can Happen In The Theater - The Musical World of Maury Yeston” opened to great acclaim at the York Theater in New York in the Spring of 2020. The European premiere of the Small Ensemble “Titanic”, directed by Thom Sullivan and produced by Danielle Tarento, opened to rave reviews at the Southwark Playhouse in London, winning Broadwayworld UK’s Award for Best Regional Production of a Musical in the UK, Whatsonstage Best Regional Production of a Musical, and swept the Offie Awards in four categories including Best Musical Production. Southwark Playhouse matched this success in August 2015 with their well-received production of “Grand Hotel”, garnering Critic’s “top picks” from numerous UK publications.

A Revue showcasing his work, conceived and directed by Gerard Alessandrini - “Anything Can Happen In The Theater - The Musical World of Maury Yeston” opened to great acclaim at the York Theater in New York in the Spring of 2020. In addition PS Classics recorded the DECEMBER SONGS - for the first time accompanied by a Full Orchestra - performed Victoria Clark with new orchestrations by Larry Hochman, in May of 2022.

The European premiere of the Small Ensemble “Titanic”, directed by Thom Sullivan and produced by Danielle Tarento, opened to rave reviews at the Southwark Playhouse in London, winning Broadwayworld UK’s Award for Best Regional Production of a Musical in the UK, Whatsonstage Best Regional Production of a Musical, and swept the Offie Awards in four categories including Best Musical Production. Southwark Playhouse matched this success in August 2015 with their well-received production of “Grand Hotel”, garnering Critic’s “top picks” from numerous UK publications.

PS Classics has also released another new album - “Maury Sings Yeston, The Demos” (A compendium of 40 personal demos of many of his works). He is currently also writing a new musical in the grand tradition based on the story of the building of The Brooklyn Bridge, and an original musical based on the life of the Japanese Haiku poet Kobayashi Issa, scheduled for production in Tokyo in 2026.

Yeston holds a PhD. from Yale University and BA and MA degrees from both Yale and Clare College, Cambridge Universities. He was Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music at Yale for eight years, twice cited by the undergraduates as being among Yale’s top ten professors (click to continue)

…and was Director of the BMI Music Theatre Advanced Workshop in New York City for twenty five years. As a musicologist he is the author of “The Stratification of Musical Rhythm” (recently republished in Chinese) – a seminal music theory text noted for its groundbreaking innovation in his original theory of rhythm, and ”Readings in Schenker Analysis” - a compendium of academic essays elucidating the study of tonality as conceived by the noted theorist Heinrich Schenker – both books published by Yale University Press… .. in addition to his scholarly articles including “Rubato and The Middleground” published in The Journal of Music Theory, and is a founding member of the Society for Music Theory, having given that organization its name at the moment of its creation and separation from the American Musicological Society.