Maury Yeston

Maury Yeston (born October 23, 1945) is an American composer, lyricist and music theorist.He has written the music and lyrics for several Broadway musicals and is a classical orchestral and ballet composer. Among his Broadway musicals are Nine in 1982, Titanic in 1997, for both of which he won Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Score and was nominated for Grammy Awards, and Grand Hotel in 1989, for which he received a Tony nomination for best score and Drama Desk Awards nominations for his music and lyrics. He received a third Grammy nomination and another Tony Award for Best Revival for the revival of Nine in 2004. He also was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for two of his new songs in the film version of Nine.

His musical version of the novel The Phantom of the Opera, titled Phantom (1991), has received more than 1,000 productions worldwide, across America, Japan, Korea, the UK, Germany, Poland, Australia, and other countries. His off-Broadway musicals include Death Takes a Holiday (2011), nominated for eleven Drama Desk Awards. Other works include December Songs, a classical crossover song cycle commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its centennial celebration; An American Cantata (a three-movement choral symphony commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for its millennium celebration); Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts, a full-length story ballet commissioned by the Kansas City Ballet for the opening of the new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City; a cello concerto, premiered by Yo-Yo Ma with Sir Gilbert Levine conducting and other pieces for chamber ensembles and solo piano.Yeston served on the board of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and is a lifetime member of the Dramatists Guild Council, an honorary ambassador of the Society of Composers & Lyricists, past president of the Kleban Foundation, and a founding member of the Society for Music Theory. He serves on the editorial boards of Musical Quarterly and the Kurt Weill Foundation Publication Project and on the advisory board of the Yale University Press Broadway Series. Early in his career, he was an associate professor of music and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music at Yale University for eight years, authoring two scholarly books on music theory published by Yale Press (The Stratification of Musical Rhythm and Readings in Schenker Analysis), and subsequently presided over and taught the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York City for more than two decades beginning in 1982.