He's among the hot breed of fast-rising, young musical-theatre songwriters. Along with such talented composers as Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, The Light in the Piazza) and Michael John LaChiusa (The Wild Party, Hello Again), Jason Robert Brown appears to be inheriting the mantle of Stephen Sondheim, keeping the genre moving forward in exciting new directions. His best-known work, the dramatic musical Parade (book by Alfred Uhry, direction by Harold Prince), won a 1999 Best Score Tony for composer-lyricist Brown. His intimate character-driven musicals, Songs for a New World and The Last Five Years, are rapidly becoming staples at regional theatres looking for small-scale musicals. New productions of both works recently appeared in the Southland. He also performs and works as a musical adapter–arranger. Besides all of this, he has accepted a spring semester stint as George Burns Visiting Artist at the University of Southern California School of Theatre. "The work I do seems inevitable," said Brown. "I wouldn't consider putting any one of them aside. They are all reflective of me as a creative creature."
Brown has taught many master classes, and he taught a semester at Emerson College, Boston. "That was a wonderful experience, but I wanted to try to do something that was a little more comprehensive," he explained. "When I talked to Madeline Dean [USC's dean of musical theatre], we came up with a plan that involves me working with 45 acting students and 15 writing students. Within that framework, we can learn things about each other and work together to find out what we do best. The focus is on musical theatre, but at any school or teaching program, the focus is really about self-realization. We all do whatever we do to present our best selves. These are kids who wanted to do that through musical theatre."
He elaborated, "My job is to tell them when they don't look good, or what they're doing that doesn't look honest or real. I'm not Stella Adler; I'm not going to get them to find some buried childhood trauma and then learn how to exploit it. I want them to be able to just feel confident that what they're doing looks comfortable and genuine." Brown said in his stage projects he has often worked directly with actors. "I'm a hands-on collaborator in every way, and I know what I want. It's easier for me to work directly with people than to sit back with my arms folded and hope everyone gets it right."
He has worked on projects that were very much his own creative baby—the intimate musicals—as well as those in which he was brought in to help bring someone's artistic vision to life, becoming part of the creative team. Prince and Uhry approached him to write the score for Parade, the dark, fact-based story of Leo Frank, the Jewish man railroaded for a murder he didn't commit in 1913 Georgia. Brown was hired as conductor-arranger for the ill-fated Broadway musical Urban Cowboy and for William Finn's A New Brain, directed by Graciela Daniele. He hesitates accepting the label of "eclectic" for his acclaimed songwriting style, which includes elements of pop, classical, traditional Broadway, and other influences. He said, "I always write music that I think is right for a character to sing or for the mood of the particular moment. Many different kinds of music might be appropriate at any given time. This is not a good time to discriminate. We have so much open to us."
He does many concert gigs as a singer, and he is looking forward to the imminent release of his first solo pop CD, Wearing Someone Else's Clothes. Theatrical projects in the hopper include a Broadway-bound tuner based on the 1992 film Honeymoon in Vegas, and a collaboration with writer Dan Elish on 13, a musical about teenagers.