Tony Award-winning musical Thoroughly Modern Millie comes to the Aronoff Center on Tuesday for a two-week run under the Broadway in Cincinnati banner.

The feel-good movie-into-musical about a flapper who finds love and adventure in the big city has an essentially new score by Jeanine Tesori, an arranger and conductor whose composing career began in the mid-'90s with Violet, a much darker musical that has been produced locally by both Ensemble Theatre and Hot Summer Nights. (Tesori is currently returning to a darker mood, collaborating with playwright Tony Kushner on Caroline, or Change, set in the Civil Rights Movement and previewing at New York's Public Theatre.)

We caught up for five quick questions:

Fans of the movie are going to be surprised - there is almost all new music. Why?

The show's creators wanted to create their own stage musical, not an adaptation. I was hired to be an arranger, not to write an original score. I asked them, what kind of experience they wanted the audience to have and they said "new and old at the same time."

When did you decide to write an original score?

I knew we had to be judicious with famous material from the American Songbook - that can bring an audience out of the situation (on stage.)

We were looking for songs and looking for songs and looking for songs (to fit specific moments in the show). It was taking so long to search, we realized we could write them just as fast.

Your little girl Sisi and "Millie" have grown up together?

They're both 6. I literally had just had my baby when I was called for Millie. (I was pregnant during Violet.) When Millie opened, somebody asked me how long I'd been working on it and I looked at Sisi and answered "39 inches."

All along, I thought, how great that the two of them would meet, that this is a great show to take kids. I can't take her to Caroline...

You haven't chosen an easy path, composing for the musical stage.

My father used to constantly say, "What are you doing? Are you making any money?" And I'd say, you make the spaghetti, you throw it at the wall. Some of it sticks, some of it slides, some of it stays in the pot. You just have to keep throwing it.

What has "Millie" meant to your career?

It gives me the ability to exhale. I'm 42, and I've finally stopped running out of money.

Millie plays Nov. 18-30 in the Aronoff's Procter & Gamble Hall. Information: 241-7469.