Jason Robert Brown

Posted on December 22, 2014 at 4:48 pm

“Jason Robert Brown in Concert”
with Anika Noni Rose

On THIRTEEN (WNET NY)
Friday, January 2nd at 10:30PM
Monday, January 5th at 1:15AM

On WLIW/21
Sunday, January 25th at 3:30PM
Friday, January 30th at 4AM

This January on WNET and WLIW, three-time Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown makes his broadcast television debut in a high-powered concert with Tony winner Anika Noni Rose. Recorded in 2011 at New York City’s historic Abrons Art Center, Brown and Rose and a band of some of Broadway’s greatest musicians perform Brown’s best-known and most-loved selections from The Last Five Years, Parade, Songs for a New World, 13, Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes and his new Broadway smash Honeymoon In Vegas! Also tune in to hear the world premiere of four new songs from Brown’s forthcoming second solo CD.

THIRTEEN will air “Jason Robert Brown in Concert” on Friday, January 2nd at 10:30 PM; Monday, January 5 at 1:15 AM and WLIW/21 on Sunday, January 25th at 3:30pm; Friday, January 30th at 4AM.

“Jason Robert Brown in Concert” is directed for television and executive produced by Michael Moritz, with audio supervision by Jeffrey Lesser, and a band featuring Gary Sieger, Randy Landau, Howard Joines, Tony Kadleck, Sal Spicola, Robert DeBellis and Clint Sharman.

Jason Robert Brown has been hailed as “one of Broadway’s smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen Sondheim” (Philadelphia Inquirer), and his “extraordinary, jubilant theater music” (Chicago Tribune) has been heard all over the world, whether in one of the hundreds of productions of his musicals every year or in his own incendiary live performances. The New York Times refers to Jason as “a leading member of a new generation of composers who embody high hopes for the American musical.” The Bridges of Madison County, a musical adapted with Marsha Norman from the bestselling novel, ran on Broadway earlier this year and netted Jason two Tony Awards, for Best Score and Best Orchestrations. Honeymoon In Vegas, based on Andrew Bergman’s film, is in previews now on Broadway (opening January 15) following a triumphant production at Paper Mill Playhouse last fall. A film version of his epochal Off-Broadway musical The Last Five Years will be released February 13, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan and directed by Richard LaGravenese; and a concert version of his Tony Award-winning Parade will be performed at Avery Fisher Hall on Feburary 16. His major musicals as composer and lyricist include: 13, written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish, which began its life in Los Angeles in 2007 and opened on Broadway in 2008 (and was subsequently directed by the composer for its West End premiere in 2012); The Last Five Years, which was cited as one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best of 2001 and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics (and was subsequently directed by the composer in its record-breaking Off-Broadway run at Second Stage Theatre in 2013); Parade, written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre in 1998, and subsequently won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best New Musical, as well as garnering Jason the Tony Award for Original Score; and Songs for a New World, a theatrical song cycle directed by Daisy Prince, which played Off-Broadway in 1995, and has since been seen in hundreds of productions around the world. His orchestral adaptation of E.B. White’s novel The Trumpet of the Swan premiered at the Kennedy Center with John Lithgow and the National Symphony Orchestra, and the CD was released on PS Classics. As a soloist or with his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, Jason has performed sold-out concerts around the world.

Anika Noni Rose won Tony and Theatre World awards for her performance in the musical Caroline, or Change and starred as Lorrell in the screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Dreamgirls. Her other stage credits include A Raisin in the Sun (Tony Nom), The Pirates of Penzance; Encores! productions of The Cradle Will Rock and Purlie; the New York Philharmonic’s production of Company; Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite Terrence Howard, James Earl Jones, and Phylicia Rashad; Footloose; and Eli’s Coming (Obie Award). Anika’s other film credits include For Colored Girls and Disney’s animated feature The Princess and the Frog, in which she voiced Princess Tiana, making her Disney’s first African-American princess and the youngest inductee to ever be honored as a Disney Legend. Anika will soon be seen in the film Half of a Yellow Sun opposite Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Her TV credits include “The Good Wife,” “Private Practice,” Hallmark Hall of Fame’s “The Watsons Go to Birmingham,” Stephen King’s “Bag of Bones” and “A Day Late and a Dollar Short” opposite Whoopi Goldberg on Lifetime (upcoming). Anika is a three-time NAACP Image Award nominee for her performances in Anthony Minghella’s “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” (HBO, Peabody Award), “Law & Order: SVU” and Mitch Albom’s “Have a Little Faith” (Hallmark).

Honeymoon in Vegas, the eagerly anticipated new musical comedy with book by Blazing Saddles and Fletch writer Andrew Bergman and score by three-time Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown, directed by Gary Griffin, is now in previews on for a Thursday, January 15, 2015 opening night at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre (208 West 41st Street).