Jason Robert Brown

It is a very rare thing, what I saw tonight. The world premiere of a new oratorio by one of classical music’s most valuable, surprising and incisive composers, performed by the mighty New York Philharmonic under its exceptional new conductor, featuring two (!) choirs, and directed by a towering member of the theater world. Watching Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth tonight felt to me like being part of history. It is an astonishing and important piece. Fire in my mouth tells the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, through the words of the girls and women who workedRead More »

On New Year’s Eve, I said goodbye to 2018 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where Kate Baldwin and Ashley Perez Flanagan sang a ravishing version of my song “Singing You Home,” with Kent Tritle conducting the orchestra, and an audience of more than 3,000 New Yorkers grateful to have survived that tumultuous and exhausting year. Now: on to the business of a new start and a new determination! So what better way than to share the SubCulture stage with the very definition of Joy, my friend and collaborator, the mostly blonde Betsy Wolfe? We got Betsy playingRead More »

It’s been an unbelievable year of shows at the SubCulture residency. So many dazzling artists doing thrilling work and really pushing me to keep up – Carrie Manolakos, Sutton Foster, the astonishing quartet of Dr. Patrice E. Turner, A.J. Sojola, NaTasha Yvette Williams and Nova Payton, the dynamic duo of Blaemire and Iman, Gavin Creel, Camille Thurman, Frances Ruffelle, and Shoshana Bean, Rachel Bay Jones, Cynthia Erivo and Jimmy Greene, Jeremy Jordan, Ty Taylor and Sierra Boggess, Carolee Carmello and Solea Pfeiffer – really, just click on those set lists and marvel at the level of talent I get toRead More »

Twenty years ago, Carolee Carmello headed the company of my first Broadway show, Parade, and poured her voice of molten brass right into my music for a Tony Award nomination and a performance for the ages. Twenty years later, Solea Pfeiffer stood on the stage of City Center to sing in the first New York revival of Songs for a New World and blasted into the stratosphere with her limitless musicality And on November 5, these two extraordinary performers came to share the stage at SubCulture with me and my gloriously versatile band, and we spent a wonderful night celebratingRead More »

The amazing Chris McGriff invited me out to the Hill School to share a wonderful night with his amazing students, who had just finished a run of Songs for a New World and couldn’t wait to ask me a million questions about it and why there are blessings on the water and the stones. Hope from How We React and How We Recover (2018)It All Fades Away from The Bridges of Madison County (2014)I Love Betsy from Honeymoon in Vegas (2015)Hallowed Ground from How We React and How We Recover (2018)Fifty Years Long from How We React and How WeRead More »