The School of Music at Yale University has recently announced the appointment of composer Jeanine Tesori and singer Dawn Upshaw as "Professors in the Practice."

Each new professor will teach a one-semester course: Tesori's, which is titled "The Spirit of the Original: Adaptation Lab," will focus on the process of adapting one art form into another, while Upshaw will teach a performance-focused course on "Inhabiting Text and Music in Contemporary Song Repertoire," focusing specifically on late 20th- and early 21st-century song repertoire.

A two-time Tony Award-winner, Jeanine Tesori has written scores for Broadway musicals including Kimberly Akimbo, Fun Home, Caroline, or Change, Shrek The Musical, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. She has also written film music and operas, including The Lion, The Unicorn, and Me, Blue (which won the Music Critics Association of North America Award for Best New Opera), and Grounded.

One of the world's leading singers, Dawn Upshaw has made nearly 300 appearances at the Metropolitan Opera. She has given the premiere performances of 25 new works and is the recipient of six GRAMMY Awards. As well as being the first singer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, she is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She holds an honorary doctorate from Yale.

"We are so lucky to have two titans of the music world joining the Faculty of Arts and Sciences," said Marc Robinson, the dean of Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Jeanine Tesori’s profound works for music theater and Dawn Upshaw’s glorious performances in opera houses and concert halls have changed lives. I am thrilled that Yale students will now learn from their vast experience."

"[Tesori] is basically the Giuseppe Verdi of 21st-century America," said Gundula Kreuzer, chair of Yale’s music department. "Verdi wanted to tell stories that spoke to people of the time in music and stage performance. That’s exactly what Jeanine is doing."

"Dawn Upshaw, like maybe nobody else, really paved a new career path for singers, especially female singers, beyond just being pigeonholed in a specific fach and learning its repertory," Kreuzer added. "She started to commission music from contemporary composers early in her career and championed new work at a time when that wasn’t common. So she has working relationships with some of the most eminent composers, especially American composers, of our day."