Jenny Giering

Biography

Jenny Giering is a theater composer who writes both musicals and incidental scores for straight plays. She holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard and an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU. She has been artist in residence at Harvard and at the York Theater Company. Her awards include The Jonathan Larson Prize, The Constance Klinsky Prize from Second Stage Theater Company, The National Art Song Award, New Dramatists’ Frederick Loewe Award, several NEA and NAMT production grants. She has twice received the Tilles Music Chair from Chicago Shakespeare and the Weston New Musical Award. She has scored plays at TheatreWorks/Silicon Valley, Chicago Shakespeare, Shakespeare Theater, Weston Playhouse, Barrington Stage among many others. Her residencies include Montalvo, Goodspeed Opera House’s Mercer Colony, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, and Sundance’s Ucross Residency. Currently, she’s working on two musicals: Alice Bliss (commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, book by Karen Hartman, lyrics by Adam Gwon, directed by Mark Brokaw) and What We Leave Behind (book & lyrics by Sean Barry), a one woman show exploring her journey through chronic illness. Her essays about her disability have appeared in Slate Magazine and the New York Times.