Her major works include Kimberly Akimbo; Fun Home; Caroline, or Change; Shrek The Musical; Thoroughly Modern Millie; and Violet.

Tesori made her credited Broadway debut as the dance arranger, associate conductor and keyboard player for The Secret Garden in 1991.

Soon after, she was the associate conductor and played keyboard for the original production of The Who's Tommy, working with frequent collaborator, Des McAnuff.

Tesori says she drew from her experience working on Tommy while writing Fun Home, and that it gave her the idea for how to bring her protagonist into her own story.

Tesori was asked to write the score for the 1998 production of Twelfth Night after being introduced to Nicholas Hytner by Ira Weitzman.

[8] [9] In 2000, Tesori joined forces with lyricist Dick Scanlan to write eleven new songs for a stage adaptation of Thoroughly Modern Millie.

In 2019, Tesori was credited as voice coach on the new Steven Spielberg film of West Side Story for which Kushner wrote the screenplay based largely on the original stage musical.

[12] Fun Home opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater on October 17, 2013, and sold out through November 4, 2013, with numerous extensions until it closed there on January 12, 2014.

[14] Following the successful Off-Broadway run, the show transferred to Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre, with previews beginning on March 27, 2015, and an official opening on April 19, 2015.

[24] In December 2021, her new musical, Kimberly Akimbo, with book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire opened at the Linda Gross Theater in Manhattan.

[27][28] The Kennedy Center's publicity summarizes the opera as "Jess is a hot shot F-16 fighter pilot, an elite warrior trained for the sky.

When an unexpected pregnancy grounds her, she’s reassigned to the “chair force” to control drones in Afghanistan from the comfort of a trailer in Las Vegas.

Mezzo-soprano Emily D'Angelo stars as a pilot and mother shaken into a downward spiral as her separation between career and home crumbles.