the GILMAN & GONZALEZ-FALLA
THEATER FOUNDATION

Jason Robert Brown

1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Musical Theater Award recipient. Jason is the Tony Award-winning composer and lyricist of Parade, a musical written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre in December 1998, and subsequently won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critic's Circle Awards for Best New Musical. Parade was also presented in Atlanta and on national tour in 2000, which Jason conducted. Jason’s first musical, Songs for a New World, a theatrical song cycle directed by Daisy Prince, played Off-Broadway at the WPA Theatre in the fall of 1995, and has since been seen in more than fifty productions around North America and the United Kingdom. Both shows were recorded for RCA Victor, and their scores are published by Hal Leonard Music. Jason’s new musical, The Last Five Years, premiered to rave reviews at Chicago¹s Northlight Theatre, and will open off-Broadway in the spring of 2002. Jason is also writing a dance-musical, The Moneyman.

Two of Jason’s songs were included on Audra McDonald’s debut album on Nonesuch Records, Way Back to Paradise. Jason is also the composer of the incidental music for David Marshall Grant’s Current Events, David Lindsay-Abaire’s Fuddy Meers andKimberly Akimbo, Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery, and the Irish Repertory Theater’s production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night.Jason is honored to be an Artist-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He is currently at work on a solo album. As a conductor and arranger, Jason’s recent New York credits include Oliver Goldstick’s play, Dinah Was, directed by David Petrarca, at the Gramercy Theatre; and William Finn’s A New Brain, directed by Graciela Daniele, at Lincoln Center Theater. Jason was the musical director of the pop vocal group, The Tonics, with whom he performed at the 1992 tribute to Stephen Sondheim at Carnegie Hall (recorded by RCA Victor); he was the conductor and orchestrator of Yoko Ono’s musical, New York Rock, at the WPA Theatre (on Capitol Records); and he orchestrated Andrew Lippa's john and jen, Off-Broadway at Lamb’s Theatre (Varese Sarabande). In 1994, Jason was the conductor and arranger of Michael John La Chiusa’s The Petrified Prince, directed by Harold Prince, at the Public Theatre. Additionally, Jason served as the orchestrator and arranger of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams’s score for a proposed musical of Star Wars. Jason also took over as musical director for the Off-Broadway hit When Pigs Fly. Jason has conducted and created arrangements and orchestrations for Liza Minnelli, Tovah Feldshuh, and Laurie Beechman, among many others.

Jason studied composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.,with Samuel Adler, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner. He now lives in New York City. Jason is a member of the Dramatist Guild.