Tony Award for Best Original Score facts for kids

The Tony Award for Best Original Score is a special prize given out each year at the Tony Awards. It celebrates the best new music and lyrics written for a musical or play on Broadway in New York City. The "score" includes all the songs and background music. To win, the music and lyrics must be completely new and created just for that show. Old songs or music from movies don't count!

About the Award

This award honors the talented people who create the sounds of a show. They are called composers (who write the music) and lyricists (who write the words for the songs). Sometimes, one person does both jobs!

How the Award Changed

The Tony Award for Best Original Score has changed a little over the years.

• In some early years (like 1947, 1950, 1951, and 1962), only the composer won the award.
• Most of the time, both the composer and the lyricist win together.
• In 1971, the awards for music and lyrics were given separately. Interestingly, Stephen Sondheim won both for his musical Company.

Special Moments

There has only been one tie in this category. It happened in 1993. Both Fred Ebb & John Kander for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Pete Townshend for The Who's Tommy shared the award.

Sometimes, plays (shows without singing) are nominated for this award. This happens when they have special original music written just for them. For example, Much Ado About Nothing was nominated in 1973. In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many musicals couldn't open. This meant that all the shows nominated for Best Original Score that year were plays!

Groundbreaking Winners

Some winners have made history:

• In 2013, Cyndi Lauper became the first woman to win the award all by herself for Kinky Boots.
• In 2015, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori were the first team of only women to win for Fun Home.
• Toby Marlow is the youngest person to win this award. He was 27 when he won with Lucy Moss for SIX.
• Adolph Green is the oldest winner. He was 76 when he won for The Will Rogers Follies.
• Two people have won this award after they passed away: T. S. Eliot for Cats and Jonathan Larson for Rent.

Winners and Nominees

     indicates the winner

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s Winners

1980s Winners

1990s Winners

2000s Winners

2010s Winners

2020s Winners

Multiple Wins

Some composers and lyricists have won this award more than once!

6 Wins

• Stephen Sondheim (won 3 times in a row!)

3 Wins

• Cy Coleman (won 2 times in a row!)
• Betty Comden
• Fred Ebb
• Adolph Green
• John Kander
• Andrew Lloyd Webber

2 Wins

• Jerry Herman
• Robert Lopez
• Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Tim Rice
• Richard Rodgers
• Jeanine Tesori
• Maury Yeston
• Jason Robert Brown

Multiple Nominations

Many talented people have been nominated for this award multiple times, even if they didn't always win.

11 Nominations

• Fred Ebb
• John Kander
• Andrew Lloyd Webber

10 Nominations

• Stephen Sondheim

9 Nominations

• Cy Coleman

7 Nominations

• Tim Rice

6 Nominations

• Jeanine Tesori

5 Nominations

• Don Black
• Jerry Herman
• Richard Maltby Jr.
• Alan Menken
• Stephen Schwartz
• David Yazbek

4 Nominations

• Jason Robert Brown
• Betty Comden
• Adolph Green
• Sheldon Harnick
• Tom Kitt
• Richard Rodgers
• Charles Strouse

3 Nominations

• Howard Ashman
• Chad Beguelin
• Jerry Bock
• Adam Guettel
• Elton John
• Alan Jay Lerner
• Robert Lopez
• Glenn Slater
• Maury Yeston

Female Winners

Only eight women have won this award. Five of them won without any male writing partners. Here are the women who have won:

• Betty Comden – She won for Hallelujah, Baby! (1968), On the Twentieth Century (1978), and The Will Rogers Follies (1991). She was the first woman to win this Tony more than once.
• Lynn Ahrens – She won for Ragtime (1998).
• Lisa Lambert – She won for The Drowsy Chaperone (2006).
• Cyndi Lauper – She won for Kinky Boots (2013). She was the first woman to win this Tony by herself.
• Jeanine Tesori – She won for Fun Home (2015) and Kimberly Akimbo (2023).
• Lisa Kron – She won for Fun Home (2015). She and Jeanine Tesori were the first all-female team to win for both music and lyrics.
• Anaïs Mitchell — She won for Hadestown (2019).
• Lucy Moss — She won for 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