Jason Robert Brown

Once I finish a show, it stays finished! Done! Close the book, put it away, here the Maestro laid down his pen. Except sometimes. I mean, there’s always one line that I never got right. Or a character whose actions don’t quite make sense. Or just something … missing. I did a blog post many years ago about all the changes Alfred Uhry and I made to Parade when we revised it for the Donmar Warehouse in 2007. There isn’t enough space on the Internet to denote all the changes Robert Horn and I have made to the various versionsRead More »

When I did the first concert in my SubCulture residency in December 2014, I knew I was starting a new phase in my musical life, but I didn’t realize that I was actually closing a chapter as well. That night was the last time that Anika Noni Rose and I performed together for ten years. Before that concert, Anika and I had performed our show at Birdland in New York, at the Garrick Theater in London’s West End, at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica CA, and for three nights at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East SideRead More »

I had been warned that the crowd at the early show was likely to be kind of subdued. Monday night in Pittsburgh, mostly subscribers, older folks, nothing bad but good to know in advance. To our surprise, that was definitely not the case. We did two sold-out shows for festive, rowdy Pittsburgh audiences and we can’t wait to come back for more, as long as no one makes us eat those terrifying Primanti’s sandwiches. Although I’ve been playing with Todd and Randy for decades now, these were the first concerts we ever did as just a trio, and it wasRead More »

Let’s start this story by referring to the picture below this paragraph. That frame of video represents the real beginning of my career in the New York theater. See that dark-haired kid on the right at the piano, onstage at New York’s legendary Carnegie Hall on June 10, 1992? That’s all 6’2″ and 120 pounds of me serving as the musical director for the vocal group The Tonics, who were invited to perform in an enormous star-studded celebration of the work of Stephen Sondheim that was not only presented to a sold-out audience at Carnegie but also made into aRead More »

I don’t know about how it works in your house, but in our little corner of show business, the first Tuesday of September feels like someone shot a starter pistol in Times Square and suddenly there’s a guy screaming “BACK TO WORK, YOU WEASELS!” and everyone is running frantically to their desks. I hadn’t heard from my agent or lawyer for months and then at 10 am Tuesday there was a veritable tsunami of emails. Well, all right, welcome back then. I mean, I’ve been here the whole time, but hi. Here’s some fun stuff! Last Wednesday night, I wasRead More »