Tony Award for Best Original Score facts for kids

The Tony Award for Best Original Score is the Tony Award given to the composers and lyricists of the best original score written for a musical or play in that year. The score consists of music and/or lyrics. To be eligible, a score must be written specifically for the theatre and must be original; compilations of non-theatrical music or compilations of earlier theatrical music are not eligible for consideration.

History

The award has undergone a number of minor changes. In 1947, 1950, 1951, and 1962, the award went to the composer only. Otherwise, the award has gone to the composer and lyricist for their combined contributions, except for 1971 when the two awards were split (although Stephen Sondheim won both, for Company).

The only tie in this category occurred in 1993, when Fred Ebb & John Kander (Kiss of the Spider Woman) and Pete Townshend (The Who's Tommy) shared the award.

In only ten years have non-musical plays been nominated for Tony Awards in this category: Much Ado About Nothing in 1973; The Good Doctor in 1974; The Song of Jacob Zulu in 1993; Twelfth Night in 1999; Enron and Fences in 2010; Peter and the Starcatcher and One Man, Two Guvnors in 2012; Angels in America in 2018; To Kill a Mockingbird in 2019; A Christmas Carol, The Inheritance, The Rose Tattoo, Slave Play, and The Sound Inside in 2020; and Stereophonic in 2024. Because the Broadway season of 2019-2020 was shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only four musicals were eligible for Tony Awards. Three were jukebox musicals and the fourth was The Lightning Thief, the only musical of the season with original music. The Lightning Thief was not nominated for any Tony Awards, meaning that every nominee in this category in 2020 was a play rather than a musical.

In 2013, Cyndi Lauper became the first woman to win the award solo for Kinky Boots. In 2015, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori became the first all-woman team to win the award for Fun Home.

Toby Marlow is the youngest person to win the award; he was 27 when he won in tandem with Lucy Moss for SIX. Adolph Green is the oldest person to win the award; he was 76 when he won for The Will Rogers Follies. If T. S. Eliot were alive when he won for Cats, he would have been 94. Eliot is one of two people to receive the award posthumously, the other being Jonathan Larson, who won for Rent. He would have been 36.

Winners and nominees

     indicates the winner

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple wins

Multiple nominations

Female winners

Only eight women have won this award, five of whom won without male writing partners, and for only ten shows:

• Betty Comden – Hallelujah, Baby! (1968), On the Twentieth Century (1978), and The Will Rogers Follies (1991), becoming the first woman to win this Tony multiple times.
• Lynn Ahrens – Ragtime (1998)
• Lisa Lambert – The Drowsy Chaperone (2006)
• Cyndi Lauper – Kinky Boots (2013), becoming the first woman to win this Tony without a writing partner
• Jeanine Tesori – Fun Home (2015) and Kimberly Akimbo (2023)
• Lisa Kron – Fun Home (2015), Kron and Jeanine Tesori becoming the first all-female songwriting team (music and lyrics) to win this Tony.
• Anaïs Mitchell — Hadestown (2019)
• Lucy Moss — Six (2022)

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Premio Tony a la mejor banda sonora original para niños

• Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play
• Laurence Olivier Award for Best Original Score or New Orchestrations
• List of Tony Award-nominated productions