Jason Robert Brown

I can’t think of a better way to start out the New Year than by making music with my favorite singers and players in the world. Shoshana texted me the day I got to LA and said “You wanna do a show or not?”, to which the only logical reply is “YES,” and so Chris Isaacson offered us the great room at Catalina Bar & Grill for my one night off from conducting The Bridges of Madison County, and we got the party started. Eblen was here anyway visiting his family, Landau wanted to come visit his old hometown, andRead More »

A couple of months ago, I got an email saying that a high school principal had told one of his students that they couldn’t do “13” for their Spring Musical because one of the lead characters in the show was a terminally ill child. I wrote the following piece and sent it to that student in the hopes that it would help sway the principal from a position that honestly made no sense to me. I haven’t heard back as to whether I was successful, but the article made me think a lot about Archie and the show, and IRead More »

Here’s what I got in 2015. I got to conduct Parade at Avery Fisher Hall. I got to conduct The Trumpet of the Swan at the Halle Staatskapelle. I got to conduct three songs from Bridges with the Des Moines Symphony in front of 100,000 people. I got to conduct the overture to Honeymoon In Vegas (and many other things) with a kickass orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I got to conduct thirty performances of Bridges of Madison County on national tour. I guess I am a conductor now. (I alternate between two batons, one a giftRead More »

Let us now praise Michael John LaChiusa. One of my first jobs in New York was conducting The Petrified Prince at the Public, and so I walked into the Anspacher yesterday to see First Daughter Suite carrying twenty-one years of history with MJLC’s writing. I’ve always said he was the most dexterous of any of the lyricists in our loosely-connected gang of We-Were-On-Audra’s-First-CD writers, and that’s still true – on a technical level, he’s miles ahead of anyone else currently writing lyrics for musicals, not just cute rhymes but genuine wit and real character, serious understanding of how to useRead More »

Last night, we closed out a year of fantastic concerts at SubCulture with a full-fledged stringstravaganza and a wonderful crop of singers. Rarities included a song that we cut during previews of 13 that I’ve never performed before; the song I wrote for my wedding (sung by one of the two singers who performed it that day twelve years ago!); and, at Rozz’s suggestion, a barn-burning rendition of a Bruno Mars song that apparently everyone in the world knew but me. Also last night, the debut of the two leads of the national tour of The Bridges of Madison County,Read More »