Organisation & background
Tessitura originated inside the Metropolitan Opera in 1995, going live in 1998-99 as ‘Impresario’. In 2001, six further major arts organisations joined to form Tessitura Network, Inc., a nonprofit, member-owned cooperative rather than a venture-backed or private-equity-owned company.
Functionality
Tessitura is a CRM, ticketing and fundraising system for arts, culture and entertainment organisations. Constituent records link people to households, schools, foundations and networks, with contributions, memberships and ticket history held together. Ticketing covers general admission, timed entry and reserved seating, subscriptions and build-your-own packages, dynamic pricing, waitlists and exchanges. Fundraising runs from online gifts to planned-giving pledges, with acknowledgements, grants, matching gifts and renewals, and marketing automation draws on the same data. The TNEW web platform sells tickets, memberships and donations in one basket, and several organisations can share one database as a consortium.
Localised features
Standard US arts-sector payment processing via Tessitura Merchant Services, built with Adyen.
Implementation model
Delivered directly by the vendor, via a dedicated in-house Implementation and Training Services team, plus further consulting service lines for ongoing administration, technical integration and enterprise process work.
Hosting
Vendor-hosted or self-hosted; some member organisations run their own Tessitura environment using vendor guidance. It is built on Microsoft SQL Server, .NET and PowerBuilder.
Links
Last full research
August 2026