Jason Robert Brown

I am overjoyed to announce the release of COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE, the remixed and remastered soundtrack of our Virtual SubCulture concert from this past April, featuring Shoshana Bean and Ariana Grande! You can pre-save the album today in advance of the digital release this Friday, December 18 – I can’t wait for you to hear these incredible performances re-conceived for your ears alone. Here’s the big fancy press release: Craft Recordings and Concord Theatricals are proud to announce the official album for Tony Award-winning composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown’s spring 2020 virtual SubCulture concert featuring Ariana Grande and ShoshanaRead More »

That year, Bill Clinton was the president, and he was younger than I am now. That year, there was only one show eligible for the Best Score Tony, and so it went to Sunset Blvd. by default. That year, the legendary George Abbott died. Unrelated: Dua Lipa was born. As of that year, Andréa, who I’d met at summer camp when I was twelve years old, had not yet done a Broadway show (she’s now done seven). Neither had Brooks (he’s now done fourteen). Molaskey was still seven years away from recording her first album. And eighteen years would passRead More »

I only ever saw Brent Carver play two roles, both of them men unjustly imprisoned. His Molina in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” was flamboyant, relentless, emotions splaying like a pinwheel. I was working as a rehearsal pianist on that show, so I saw it probably thirty or forty times. Every time I saw it, he seemed to be experiencing it completely anew. He was surrounded by hardcore Broadway types who knew how to hit their marks and slam it to the back wall night after night, but Brent was doing something different, something much more slippery and dangerous; heRead More »

Ordinarily, the International Thespian Festival is a gathering of thousands of theater teens converging on a college campus in the Midwest to geek out about plays and musicals and connect with the rest of the theatrical community in a crazy immersive week of workshops, performances, classes, exhibitions and the occasional unsanctioned midnight Hedwig sing-along. Such fraternization and festivity was, alas, not a possibility this year, but the show does go on, as we say, and so a Virtual Festival was curated, and I was asked to address the assembled masses. So now, thanks to the magic of the Internet andRead More »

I’ve found it punishingly hard to write music during these last nine weeks (nine weeks!), but I did manage to do this, a tribute to the great Bucky Pizzarelli and all the extraordinary jazz musicians lost to the coronavirus. Many thanks to the folks at Local 802 for asking me to create something, and to Pete Donovan for putting the video together (and beautifully laying down the bass), as well as all the musicians who contributed: Jamie Eblen (drums), Monica Davis (violin and viola), Janet Axelrod (flute), Lynne Cohen (English horn), Elise Frawley (viola), Kyle Hoyt (French horn), Morris KainumaRead More »