Three years ago, I got a call from Michael McElroy of Broadway Inspirational Voices, asking me if I would participate in an outreach that BIV was doing with the Ronald McDonald House. I said yes immediately, and was introduced to Josie, an eleven-year-old girl with Osteogenesis Imperfecta. My job was to write a song aboutRead More »

MUSIC REVIEW | JASON ROBERT BROWN A Composer Sells His Songs and Himself By STEPHEN HOLDEN Published: February 12, 2007 The composer Jason Robert Brown has the drive of a musical commando groomed for combat in the training camp where Broadway babies, art song composers and acolytes of Billy Joel and Randy Newman jostle forRead More »

It’s what you always hope for but so rarely get: pure, unmediated theatrical ecstasy. One of the ironies of live performance — which is, of necessity, in the moment — is that it’s all too often a recycling of past moments; the spontaneity is drained by repetition and rehearsal. But last night, at the NewRead More »

The following is from a programme note, written by JRB for his 2005 Christmas engagement at the New Players’ Theatre in London. 1. “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” (1978), Billy Joel, The Stranger This song alone could explain how I ended up doing what I do.  It’s seven minutes long, it’s a wonderfully told story,Read More »

“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 theRead More »