Jason Robert Brown

Composer, conductor, arranger, lyricist, singer, and pianist Jason Robert Brown was born in 1970 in Tarrytown, NY. He studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and began working in musical theater in New York City in the early '90s, where he concentrated on merging pop/rock sensibilities with the long tradition of Broadway musicals. His first musical, Songs for a New World, debuted in 1995. Parade, a musical Brown wrote with Alfred Uhry based on the trial and lynching of Leo Frank, premiered at the Lincoln Center Theatre in 1998, eventually winning Brown a Tony Award for Best Musical Score. The Last Five Years followed and was staged in 2002. Brown has composed incidental music for several New York stage productions, and he contributed several songs to the ill-fated Broadway version of Urban Cowboy. He has also done orchestral and arrangement work for Liza Minelli, Laurie Beechman, Tovah Feldshuh, Yoko Ono, and vocal group the Tonics. Lauren Kennedy released an album of his songs called Songs of Jason Robert Brown in 2003. Brown's first solo album, Wearing Someone Else's Clothes, was released by Sh-K-Boom Records (in conjunction with Ghostlight and Razor & Tie) in 2005. An accomplished pianist and performer, Brown gigs regularly with his two-man band the Caucasian Rhythm Kings. He is married to fellow composer Georgia Stitt. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide