Jason Robert Brown

Hellobama! Tickets are on sale now for the next round of Jason Robert Brown concerts in New York City – I’ll be taking the stage of Birdland once again for FOUR NIGHTS, with an expanded band, fantastic singers, and a bunch of new songs from my forthcoming new album! (When I say “forthcoming,” I don’t mean “forthcoming soon,” I just mean that I’m working on a new album, and someday before my daughter’s bat mitzvah I might finish it.) So come catch me at Birdland, 315 W 44th St in Manhattan, on the following nights (click the link for tickets):Read More »

Kenneth Jones’s article can be found here. L.A. Drama Critics Circle Nominees Include Parade, Birkenhead, Strouse, Metcalf and More By Kenneth Jones Playbill, 25 Jan 2010 The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle announced nominees and special awards for excellence in Los Angeles and Orange County theatre for the year 2009. The 41st Annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards ceremony, hosted by Jason Graae, will take place on March 22 at the Colony Theatre in Burbank. The co-host will be critic Wenzel Jones. Awards will be given in 20 categories, honoring excellence in theatre over the past year. Eight specialRead More »

I’ve been teaching a course in musical theater performance at USC for the past four years, but this semester, I was asked to come up with a class focussing on songwriting for the musical theater. I had taught writing courses at USC before, but they were solely attended by students in the School of Theater, and so I had an overabundance of lyricists and very few composers. This year’s course, however, is being offered in conjunction with the School of Music – in fact, it’s part of the Songwriting minor – so I was assured of a more balanced groupRead More »

Here’s how I’m getting 2010 off to a great start: Earlier this year, in May, East West Players presented a somewhat unconventional production of my musical, The Last Five Years. I say “unconventional” because East West Players is a Los Angeles-based company whose mission is to produce “outstanding works and educational programs that give voice to the Asian Pacific American experience.” The Last Five Years is a musical about a Jewish writer and an Irish-Catholic actress in New York City. Those are the only two characters. It’s about as Asian as burritos. I figured East West was doing the showRead More »

Click here for Charles McNulty’s photo essay on the best theatre in California in 2009. And included in the list, this blurb about Parade: The Donmar Warehouse’s scaled-down version of Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s 1998 musical about the execution of injustice done to Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager dubiously convicted of the rape and murder of a teenage employee, featured a top-notch cast led by T.R. Knight and Lara Pulver. The material is admittedly very stark for a musical, but Brown’s Tony-winning score lent an astonishing degree of moral nuance and color. On to 2010!