All stories by Jason Robert Brown on BroadwayStars

Thursday, August 6, 2020

IN MEMORY OF BRENT CARVER by Jason Robert Brown

I only ever saw Brent Carver play two roles, both of them men unjustly imprisoned. His Molina in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” was flamboyant, relentless, emotions splaying like a pinwheel.…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 07:40PM
Sunday, June 28, 2020

IN PERFORMANCE: FROM THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL THESPIAN FESTIVAL by Jason Robert Brown

Ordinarily, the International Thespian Festival is a gathering of thousands of theater teens converging on a college campus in the Midwest to geek out about plays and musicals and connect wi…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 12:48PM
Wednesday, May 13, 2020

IN THE TIME OF…, a new song by Jason Robert Brown

I’ve found it punishingly hard to write music during these last nine weeks (nine weeks!), but I did manage to do this, a tribute to the great Bucky Pizzarelli and all the extraordinary jaz…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 02:24PM
Friday, May 1, 2020

RESIDENCY CONCERT #58: GRANDE, BEAN & SOCIAL DISTANCE by Jason Robert Brown

First we canceled the March show. We had planned a really beautiful show with Ashley Perez Flanagan, Zonya Love Johnson and Marcus Paul James for March 16, but then the social distancing ord…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 12:06AM
Thursday, April 30, 2020

UNINVITED COLLABORATIONS Vol. 1: JRB meets SHAWN COLVIN by Jason Robert Brown

It's not my fault if Shawn Colvin wants to put up songs on Facebook for me to accompany.

SOURCE: YouTube at 08:32PM

UNINVITED COLLABORATIONS, Vol. 1: SHAWN COLVIN by Jason Robert Brown

I’m a huge fan of Shawn Colvin, she’s an amazing singer, distinctive and exquisitely musical down to every inhale, and she’s a monster guitar player with the best right hand on the cir…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 03:35PM
Thursday, April 23, 2020

MONDAY 4/27: JRB ONLINE CONCERT featuring ARIANA GRANDE and SHOSHANA BEAN! by Jason Robert Brown

Monday night, April 27, at 8 PM EST, I’m proud to host the first online show of the JRB SubCulture Residency, featuring maybe the two greatest singers on the planet Earth: my muse and insp…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 11:43PM
Monday, April 13, 2020

When I'm Seven-Four (featuring Mike Titlebaum) by Jason Robert Brown

The great Mike Titlebaum, director of jazz studies at Ithaca, joins me for a typically restrained arrangement of the Beatles's "When I'm Sixty-Four" in isolation, also featuring Mike's overz…

SOURCE: YouTube at 08:32PM

SOCIAL ISOLATION SWINGIN’: JRB & Mike Titlebaum Ruin The Beatles by Jason Robert Brown

Quarantine does strange things to people. In this case, it compelled my old college buddy Mike Titlebaum (now the Director of Jazz Studies at Ithaca College) to reach out to me and ask if I …

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 03:25PM
Wednesday, April 8, 2020

PRE-SHUTDOWN SETLIST #2: TRUMPET OF THE SWAN in SEATTLE 3/7/20 by Jason Robert Brown

I have a friend who lives in Beijing, and by the time of the TADA! gala, he and his family had already been in lockdown for over a month. I remember not being able to imagine what that was l…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 10:51AM
Thursday, April 2, 2020

PRE-SHUTDOWN SETLIST #1: TADA! GALA 3/2/20 by Jason Robert Brown

Back in those long ago days when we could all still get together and make music and celebrate, Georgia and I were honored by our favorite youth theater company, TADA!, with a gala at Tribeca…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 10:15AM
Wednesday, March 4, 2020

RESIDENCY SETLIST: SHREKKIN’ WITH BRIAN D’ARCY JAMES 2/24/20 by Jason Robert Brown

Back in the early 90s, when all the musicals seemed to be Cameron Mackintosh spectacles from across the ocean, every tenor in the musical theater tried to sound like an old British rock star…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 04:59PM
Monday, February 17, 2020

NOW CASTING FOR “13” THE MOVIE! by Jason Robert Brown

In September of 2004, my friend Dan Elish and I did a private reading of the first twenty pages or so of a new musical we were working on called 13.  We filled a room with thirteen kids, al…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 02:03PM
Thursday, February 13, 2020

SET LIST: MISERICORDIA UNIVERSITY, DALLAS PA, 2/10/20 by Jason Robert Brown

A gloomy, rainy Monday night in the middle of winter in a small college town in Eastern Pennsylvania turned into a wonderful chance to make some music, tell some stories, and listen to one o…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 08:09AM
Tuesday, February 11, 2020

RESIDENCY SETLIST: IN CONCERT WITH BETTY BUCKLEY 11/23-25/19 by Jason Robert Brown

Betty Buckley and I have been circling each other for over a quarter-century, always saying how much we love each other’s work and how much we’d love to collaborate, but never knowing ex…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 07:47PM
Monday, January 20, 2020

RESIDENCY SETLIST: VOSK ON FIRE 1/12/20 by Jason Robert Brown

I can’t predict how 2020 is going to go, but I can tell you one thing: I was more than ready to be done with 2019. Show #56 of the SubCulture Residency was designed to start the year off r…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 12:12AM
Tuesday, December 17, 2019

IN MEMORY OF HAL PRINCE by Jason Robert Brown

Yesterday, December 16, I was the musical director of a memorial for my mentor, the legendary director and producer Hal Prince, at the Majestic Theater on Broadway, where The Phantom of the …

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 10:31PM
Tuesday, October 29, 2019

RESIDENCY SETLIST: DeBOSE & NIEMIETZ 10/14/19 by Jason Robert Brown

Audition story #1: On January 9, 2006, we had our first auditions for a workshop production of 13 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. A girl named Sara Niemietz came in – I had previou…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 03:19PM
Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Shut Up and Drink Your Champagne: The Impossible Life of the Impossible Elaine Stritch by Jason Robert Brown

In “Still Here,” a biography by Alexandra Jacobs, Stritch comes across as a matchless talent and a hopeless neurotic.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:12PM
Monday, September 16, 2019

RESIDENCY SET LIST: JENN COLELLA & CHILINA KENNEDY 9/9/19 by Jason Robert Brown

In the summer of 1984, I signed up to be in the Rock Band program at French Woods. Every other kid in Rock Band that summer was a guitarist or a drummer; no one ever knew what to do with a k…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 06:48PM
Monday, August 19, 2019

LA PASIÓN DE ESPARZA 8/9/19 by Jason Robert Brown

It feels like a cliché to write about a performer’s “passion,” such an overused word, and yet I can’t think of any other way to discuss the experience of putting this show together …

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 02:01AM
Wednesday, July 31, 2019

THE PRINCE OF BROADWAY by Jason Robert Brown

The post THE PRINCE OF BROADWAY appeared first on Jason Robert Brown.

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 03:57PM
Monday, July 29, 2019

RECOMMENDATION: GRACE McLEAN’S “IN THE GREEN” by Jason Robert Brown

Last night I went to Lincoln Center to see Grace McLean‘s thrilling musical, “In The Green.” I have been a fan of Grace’s for years, and she was my guest at a particularly wild SubCu…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 04:08PM
Tuesday, July 23, 2019

A LOOK BACK AT “PARADE” by Jason Robert Brown

I started writing Parade twenty-five years ago, in 1994, and today I happened to be doing some work in my storage unit when I found a couple of really fun pieces of history from that show. T…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 10:26PM
Monday, July 1, 2019

SETLIST: GHOSTLIGHT THEATRE, BENTON HARBOR MI 6/29/19 by Jason Robert Brown

Paul Mow had a dream of building a theater in the newly-revitalized Arts District of Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, Michigan, and as usual for Paul, he pushed and pushed and made it come true. I …

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 06:44PM
Sunday, June 2, 2019

UPDATE ON THE UN-INVISIBLE GIRL by Jason Robert Brown

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…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 01:05AM
Tuesday, May 28, 2019

RESIDENCY SET LIST 5/19/19: THE WAYNE BRADY DANCE PARTY by Jason Robert Brown

What is the recipe for a Wayne Brady? You need a pound of generosity and, like, a ton of charm, and then fourteen gallons of talent, open up a can of fearlessness, and sprinkle at least four…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 10:11PM
Thursday, May 16, 2019

THE MAGIC OF DORIS DAY by Jason Robert Brown

Man, oh man, do I love Doris Day’s singing. It’s elegant but earthy, with her rich creamy voice that burrows deep into the chords and finds the perfect place to nestle, cozying up agains…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 11:02PM
Friday, April 26, 2019

RESIDENCY SET LIST: UMPHRESS AT LAST! 4/22/19 by Jason Robert Brown

Let’s be honest: some people sing better than others. And some people sing better than pretty much anyone. And one of those people is Alysha Umphress. I’ve been waiting for the chance to…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 03:56PM

SETLIST: KENNEDY CENTER, WASHINGTON DC (American College Theatre Festival), 4/18/19 by Jason Robert Brown

2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the American College Theater Festival, and I was honored to be asked to be the keynote entertainer at the Kennedy Center (in the same theater where I condu…

SOURCE: Jason Robert Brown at 01:28PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards