Jason Robert Brown

“It goes song, song, song, song, intermission, song, song, song, lynch,” quipped Jason Robert Brown at a recent one-night-only singer-songwriter concert of his work at North Hollywood’s El Portal Theatre. He was introducing the opening number of “Parade,” the ambitious musical about the anti-Semitic lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 Georgia that won Brown the 1999 Tony for its score but famously closed after 85 performances. The lanky, dark-haired Brown, 35, had reason to be in a confident, even jocular mood: “Parade” happens to be, as he put it, “the only one of my musicals not currently playing at aRead More »

Welcome! (Don’t be confused by the date. I’m really writing this on March 17, 2008.) If you’ve made it to this page, it’s because you’re auditioning this Saturday for the all-teen band of “13”. We’re all very excited to meet you at Carroll’s (you can find the address and other information about Carroll Music by clicking that word there), and to put together a truly smokin’ band. Remember that sign-in time on Saturday is at 9 am, and we expect to start playing at 10. These are the five musicians we are looking to hire: 1) Keyboard – must beRead More »

I was fresh out of college when I met composer-lyricist-arranger-musical director-orchestrator-conductor-musician Jason Robert Brown. On that sweltering July evening, in a Greenwich Village cabaret, I remember thinking two things: first, that I was hearing a stunningly creative voice that would shine in the coming generation of writers; second, he looked like he would be a fun and interesting friend. Thirteen years later, both have proven happily true. With a Tony, Drama Desk, and New York Drama Critic’s Circle win under his belt for 1999’s Parade, a Tony nomination for 2003’s Urban Cowboy, Off-Broadway productions of The Last Five Years andRead More »

Strange. Brave. Incongruous. Any of these descriptions might apply to the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s final concert this season, titled "The New Broadway: Sondheim and Generation Next." To be performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall next Sunday and June 15, the program will feature songs by three composers who are critically acclaimed but not yet famous: Jason Robert Brown, Ricky Ian Gordon and Adam Guettel. The combination is certainly odd. The venerable Master Chorale is associated more with Bach, Mozart and Brahms than with newly minted show tunes, so it’s hard to imagine how songs by three avatars of musicalRead More »

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