Jason Robert Brown

Playing to a huge crowd on Coney Island at the end of a beautiful late-summer day? With my full band, including an incredible horn section? And a guest spot from the ever-spectacular Lindsay Mendez? And a preview of next week’s L5Y concert with the one and only Tony Award-winning magical Cynthia Erivo? HELL YES, ELSIE FEST. Let’s do this thing! And thank you, Darren Criss, for inviting me to come play with the cool kids! Moving Too Fast from The Last Five Years (2002) I Love Betsy from Honeymoon in Vegas (2015) Melinda (2015) It All Fades Away from TheRead More »

Megan and I have been going back and forth for about a year to find one night that we were both able to do a show together, and we finally landed here: Show #18, a muggy Monday night in August, with two hundred folks packing SubCulture to the gills to enjoy some fantastic music-making. I premiered a new song about the experience of dropping off my daughter at the same summer camp I went to as a teenager; my cover of the month was an impressionistic jazz arrangement of a great, underpraised Sondheim song; and generally I partied with myRead More »

When I told Randy that Shaina Taub would be joining us for this concert, he said, “Oh, man, she’s the real thing.” Truer words ne’er have been spoken. I first saw Shaina when she performed “The Visitors” at the Lilly Awards last November. Her confidence and command as a performer was really impressive, but it was the assurance and invention in her songwriting that really knocked me out. This was an important writer and an important voice. Turned out I was a little late to the party – she had already given a powerhouse concert at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook,Read More »

Last night, four guys with beards (and one unbelievable woman) opened their mouths at SubCulture and amazing things came out. I wanted to celebrate some great writing on Broadway this season, and I wanted to make some great music with fantastic people, and I got my wish in spades. Back in April 2015, I shared the concert with my friend and colleague Tom Kitt, and we had a fantastic time playing each other’s material and trading handing off the reins. If part of this residency is about me getting to go down different roads, then now, over a year later,Read More »

After Columbine, after Virginia Tech, after Fort Hood, after Tuscon, after Aurora, after Sandy Hook, after San Bernadino, and now, after two horrifying shootings over the weekend in Orlando, I have finally learned the words I need to say. I started writing this song after the massacre in San Bernadino last December, but I couldn’t really figure out how to finish it. The second verse came to me with startling clarity in April, on a day when gun violence had temporarily receded from the front pages. The performance here is the first time I sang the song in public, atRead More »