Manhattan Concert Productions to Bring PARADE to Avery Fisher Hall on 2/16; Jason Robert Brown to Conduct

The TONY Award-winning score of PARADE will be brought to life for one night only at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, February 16, 2015. Recent TONY-nominee Jason Robert Brown will be at the helm to conduct a star-studded cast and full chorus as Music Director.

Following the phenomenal success of Titanic earlier this year, and Ragtime in 2013, Manhattan Concert Productions will now bring the Drama Desk and TONY Award-winning score of PARADE back to Lincoln Center where it all began in 1998. This concert performance of PARADE will feature over 200 auditioned singers from the across the US, the enlarged forces of New York City Chamber Orchestra and a full professional Broadway cast.

With a skillful score by Jason Robert Brown and a book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Alfred Uhry, PARADE tells a controversial story of the 1913 trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank, who was accused and convicted of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old employee, Mary Phagan in Atlanta, Georgia. This was Brown's very first Broadway production, and his score "draws on a variety of influences, from pop-rock to folk to rhythm and blues and gospel" - Variety.

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 his generation, including the recently revived The Last Five Years, his debut song cycle Songs for a New World, and the seminal Parade, for which he won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Score. Jason is nominated for both the Best Score and Best Orchestration TONY Awards this year for his highly praised score to The Bridges of Madison County.

Jason Robert Brown has been hailed as "one of Broadway's smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen Sondheim" (Philadelphia Inquirer), and his "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. The New York Times refers to Jason as "a leading member of a new generation of composers who embody high hopes for the American musical." Honeymoon In Vegas, based on Andrew Bergman's film, opens on Broadway later this year following a triumphant production at Paper Mill Playhouse last fall. A film version of his epochal Off-Broadway musical The Last Five Years will be released later this year, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan and directed by Richard LaGravenese.

His major musicals as composer and lyricist include: 13, written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish, which began its life in Los Angeles in 2007 and opened on Broadway in 2008 (and was subsequently directed by the composer for its West End premiere in 2012); 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 (and was subsequently directed by the composer in its record-breaking Off-Broadway run at Second Stage Theatre in 2013); Parade, written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre 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 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. 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, and the CD was released on PS Classics. Future projects include a new chamber musical created with Daisy Prince and Jonathan Marc Sherman called The Connector, an untitled new piece created with Claudia Shear and Casey Nicholaw, and a new solo album for release in 2015.

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, 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's piano sonata, Mr. Broadway was commissioned and premiered by Anthony De Mare at Carnegie Hall. 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," and he was a Tony Award nominee for his contributions to the score of Urban Cowboy the Musical. He has also contributed music to the hit "Sesame Street" and "The Wonder Pets." His scores are published by Hal Leonard. Jason currently teaches musical theater performance and composition at the USC School of Dramatic Arts.
Jason lives with his wife, composer Georgia Stitt, and their daughters in New York City. Jason is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the American Federation of Musicians Local 802 & 47. Visit him on the web at www.jasonrobertbrown.com.

Manhattan Concert Productions presents a concert performance of PARADE on February 16, 2015 at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center.
Tickets start at $50 and go on sale Tuesday, September 2, 2014.
Like us on Facebook to access an exclusive presale code - Presale begins on August 25, 2014.
Tickets will be available from www.mcp.us, www.lincolncenter.org
CenterCharge (212) 721-6500, or in person at Avery Fisher Hall box office, 10
Lincoln Center Plaza (Columbus Avenue at 65th Street).