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’s “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 received Tony Awards for Best Score and Orchestrations. His other major musicals include: 13, which opened on Broadway on 2008 and became a celebrated Netflix feature in 2022; The Last Five Years, which became a feature film starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan; Parade, written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince; The Connector, written with Jonathan Marc Sherman; Honeymoon In Vegas, starring Tony Danza; and Songs for a New World, directed by Daisy Prince. Jason collaborated with Billy Crystal on a Broadway musical of Mr. Saturday Night with lyrics by Amanda Green. Jason conducted his orchestral adaptation of E.B. White’s novel The Trumpet of the Swan with the National Symphony Orchestra. Recently he premiered Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, written with Taylor Mac based on John Berendt’s book.
Jason’s songs, including the cabaret standard Stars and the Moon, have been performed by Ariana Grande, Jennifer Nettles, Brandi Carlile, Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Billy Porter, Betty Buckley, Renée Fleming, Jon Hendricks and many others.
As a pianist and vocalist, Jason has performed around the world, including his solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 2024 and a sold-out performance at the London Palladium with Cynthia Erivo. For six years, his monthly performances at New York’s SubCulture featured many of the music and theater world’s most extraordinary performers, including a star-studded concert at Town Hall with Stephen Sondheim, which can be heard on the Concord release Jason Robert Brown and Stephen Sondheim Live In Concert. His previous collection, Coming From Inside the House, featuring Ariana Grande and Shoshana Bean, commemorates the final SubCulture concert. His other albums, How We React and How We Recover and Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes are available from Ghostlight/Sh-K-Boom. Jason’s 2012 concert with Anika Noni Rose was broadcast on PBS, and he was the featured soloist for an episode of BBC Radio’s long-running Friday Night Is Music Night. He has also contributed music to The Wonder Pets and Sesame Street. Jason spent ten years teaching at the USC School of Dramatic Arts, and has also taught at Harvard University, Princeton University and Emerson College.
Jason studied composition at the Eastman School of Music with Samuel Adler, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner. He lives with his wife, composer Georgia Stitt, and their daughters in Nyack, NY.