In addition to winning the Tony Award for Best Score for Titanic (which won the Tony for Best Musical), Maury Yeston also won the Tony and two Drama Desk Awards for his music and lyrics to Broadway s NINE (which won five other Tonys, including Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and London s Olivier Award) when it first appeared on Broadway in 1982. The revival of NINE, starring Antonio Banderas, won the Tony Award for Best Revival in 2003, with a cast album released by PS Classics. His work on Broadway s Grand Hotel was also nominated for a Tony and two Drama Desk Awards, and won London s Olivier Award in 2005.
Yeston s music and lyrics cover a variety of styles and are showcased in The Maury Yeston Songbook (PS Classics) a collection of his finest work, recorded by a group of celebrated Broadway stars. His Cello Concerto was premiered by Yo-Yo Ma, while his album Goya A Life in Song featured Placido Domingo and Gloria Estefan and included the song Till I Loved You, subsequently a Top 40 Barbra Streisand hit. His classical crossover DECEMBER SONGS was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its centennial celebration and recorded on RCA Records. Other Yeston works recorded on RCA Records include the score to his PHANTOM, which has received national and international acclaim, and the London Concert version of NINE, which starred Jonathan Pryce and Elaine Paige.
In 2000 he was commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to compose An American Cantata for 2000 Voices a choral symphony in three movements, which premiered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin.
In June 2003 he premiered his new book and musical adaptation of Frank Loesser s HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, now scheduled for worldwide production.
Yeston holds a PhD. from Yale University and BA and MA degrees from both Yale and Clare College, Cambridge University. He was Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Music Studies at Yale for eight years, and published two textbooks with Yale University Press. Currently he is Director of the BMI Music Theatre Workshop in New York City and a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild, and on the Board of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He has published two academic music texts with Yale University Press. He was named the 1997-1998 Kayden Visiting Artist at Harvard University, and recently received The Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center Creative Arts Award, and an Honorary Doctorate from Five Towns College.
