Jason Robert Brown

Jason Robert Brown is the ultimate multi-hyphenate – an equally skilled composer, lyricist, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, director and performer – best known for his dazzling scores to several of the most renowned musicals of our time, including the generation-defining “The Last Five Years”; his debut song cycle “Songs for a New World”; and the seminal “Parade,” winner of the 1999 Tony Award for Best Score and the 2023 Tony for Best Revival of a Musical.

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.  Jason’s score for “The Bridges of Madison County,” a musical adapted with Marsha Norman from the bestselling novel, received two Tony Awards (for Best Score and Orchestrations). “Honeymoon In Vegas,” based on Andrew Bergman’s film, opened on Broadway in 2015 following a triumphant production at Paper Mill Playhouse.  A film version of his epochal Off-Broadway musical “The Last Five Years” was released in 2015, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan and directed by Richard LaGravenese. His major musicals as composer and lyricist include: “13,” written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish, which opened on Broadway on 2008 and became a celebrated Netflix musical in 2022; “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 later 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 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 has since been seen in hundreds of productions around the world since its 1995 Off-Broadway debut, including a celebrated revival at New York’s City Center in the summer of 2018.  “Parade” was also the subject of two major revivals: the first, directed by Rob Ashford, at London’s Donmar Warehouse and then at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; and the second, Michael Arden’s Tony-winning 2023 Broadway production starring Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond. In 2022, Jason collaborated with comedy legend Billy Crystal on a Broadway musical of “Mr. Saturday Night” with lyrics by Amanda Green and a book by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel.  Jason conducted his orchestral adaptation of E.B. White’s novel “The Trumpet of the Swan” with the National Symphony Orchestra, and recorded the score for PS Classics. Jason recently premiered two new shows: “The Connector,“ created with Jonathan Marc Sherman and Daisy Prince, which completed a triumphant run at New York’s MCC Theater; and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” written with Taylor Mac based on John Berendt’s book and directed by Rob Ashford, currently in preparation for its Broadway premiere after playing at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

Jason studied composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., with Samuel Adler, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner.  He lives with his wife, composer Georgia Stitt, and their daughters in Nyack, New York.  Jason is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the American Federation of Musicians Local 802.  Visit him on the web at www.jasonrobertbrown.com.