Jason Robert Brown to Direct THE LAST FIVE YEARS at Second Stage in Spring 2013

Second Stage Theatre (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director) has just announced that Jason Robert Brown's musical THE LAST FIVE YEARS has been added to the company's upcoming 2012-2013 season. The musical, which has not been seen in New York City since its brief off-Broadway run over ten years ago, will be directed by MR. Brown.

Second Stage has already announced two productions for the season: the world premiere of Jon Kern's Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award-winning comedy, MODERN TERRORISM, OR THEY WHO WANT TO KILL US AND HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE THEM, directed by Peter DuBois, as well as Quiara Alegría Hudes' 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, WATER BY THE SPOONFUL, directed by Davis McCallum. For subscription or ticket information, please call the Second Stage Box Office at 212-246-4422 or visit the company's website, www.2ST.com. All productions are staged at Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street (just west of Eighth Avenue).

THE LAST FIVE YEARS is currently scheduled to play in spring 2013. A fourth mainstage production remains to be announced.

Jason Robert Brown's contemporary musical THE LAST FIVE YEARS tells the emotionally powerful story of two twenty-something New Yorkers who dive head first into a marriage fueled by the optimism that comes with finding "the one." But in a city where professional and personal passions collide and only the strongest relationships survive, navigating the waters of love and matrimony can sometimes prove too much. Funny, honest and intimate, with an exuberantly romantic score, THE LAST FIVE YEARS takes a bold look at one young couple's hope that love endures the test of time.

THE LAST FIVE YEARS premiered off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in 2002 in a production starring Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott, directed by Daisy Prince. The musical received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics, and was nominated for five additional Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Musical. THE LAST FIVE YEARS was also nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical.

Jason Robert Brown's four major musicals as composer and lyricist include 13, a musical written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish, which began its life in Los Angeles in 2007 and opened on Broadway in 2008; 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; Parade, a musical written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theater in 1998, and subsequently 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 Best Original Score; and Songs for a New World, a theatrical song cycle directed by Daisy Prince, which played Off-Broadway in 1995, and has since been seen in hundreds of productions around the world. Parade was also the subject of a major revival directed by Rob Ashford, first at London's Donmar Warehouse and then at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Upcoming musical projects include Honeymoon in Vegas, a musical adaptation of the 1992 film, written with Andrew Bergman, and The Bridges of Madison County, a musical adapted with Marsha Norman from the bestselling novel. He is also working with Daisy Prince and Jonathan Marc Sherman on a new chamber musical called The Connector. His orchestral adaptation of E.B. White's novel, The Trumpet of the Swan, premiered at the Kennedy Center with John Lithgow and the National Symphony Orchestra. Jason is the winner of the 2002 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Foundation Award for Musical Theatre. As a soloist or with his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, Jason has performed sold-out concerts around the world. His first solo album, "Wearing Someone Else's Clothes," featuring his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, was named one of Amazon.com's Best of 2005, and is available from Sh-K-Boom Records. His collaboration with singer Lauren Kennedy, "Songs of Jason Robert Brown," is available on PS Classics. Jason is also the composer of the incidental music for David Lindsay-Abaire's Kimberly Akimbo and Fuddy Meers, Marsha Norman's Last Dance, David Marshall Grant's Current Events, Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery, and the Irish Repertory Theater's production of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Jason will be serving as the musical supervisor and arranger for the upcoming musical, Prince of Broadway, a celebration of the career of Harold Prince. Jason studied composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., with Samuel Adler, 

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