Heather Headley and Ben Platt Will Join Jason Robert Brown at Carnegie Hall

Tony and Grammy Award-winning artists Heather Headley and Ben Platt will join three-time Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown for his Carnegie Hall solo concert debut on October 25, 2024, at 8:00 PM.

“This concert at Carnegie Hall coincides with my 30th year in the New York theater, and I'm so excited to bring together the past, present and future of my career all in one historic place,” Brown said. 

“I have been a fan of Heather Headley since the miraculous night I saw AIDA in its Chicago tryout, and I can't wait to collaborate with her for the first time, and to hear that remarkable voice bring my music to life. I've known Ben Platt since he was a teenager, and getting to watch his magnificent performance as ‘Leo Frank' in PARADE on Broadway represented, to me, the perfect combination of actor and role. He is a musician of limitless gifts, and it is such a joy to make music with him.”

About Heather Headley

Tony and Grammy Award Winner Heather Headley considers her multifaceted career a blessing. She was born and spent most of her childhood on the beautiful Caribbean island of Trinidad. The family moved to the United States in the early ‘90s, where Heather's love for the arts continued. In 1997, Heather won the role of Nala in the original Broadway cast of Elton John and Tim Rice's hit Tony winning musical The Lion King. While still in The Lion King, Heather was asked to audition for the title role in the writing duo's next Broadway venture together, Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida. Her portrayal of the Nubian princess, Aida, won her the praise of critics and the prestigious Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. In addition to other awards, she also received the coveted Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical. That year she was listed as one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People and Essence magazine's 30 Women To Watch. In 2012 Heather made a triumphant return to the stage, starring in The Bodyguard in London's West End,  where she gained the critics praise and a new fan base overseas.  

Heather continued her musical success on the pop charts with her 2002 debut album on RCA Records, This Is Who I Am, which featured productions by several top-flight producers. Two songs, "He Is" and the album track "I Wish I Wasn't," both emerged as Top 5 R&B and Dance chart hits. Heather earned numerous accolades for This Is Who I Am, including Grammy Award nominations for Best New Artist and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. Heather returned in January 2006 with In My Mind, her long-awaited second solo album. The opening title tune single became Heather's first #1 hit, topping the Dance and R&B charts. In 2009, Heather released Audience of One, for which she won the Grammy Award for the Best Contemporary R&B Gospel Album. In 2012, she released  Only One In The World, an album that featured songs Heather wrote, as well as some of her favorite songs that she covered. To the audience and critics' delight, Heather made her return to Broadway in 2016, starring in the Tony Award-winning The Color Purple in the role of Shug Avery.  In 2018, Heather had a recurring role on “Chicago Med,” playing the formidable Gwen Garrett. In 2021, Heather won the critics' praise for her role of the “Witch” in the New York City Center's production of Into The Woods.  Heather can currently be seen as a series regular on the Netflix series “Sweet Magnolias.”

About Ben Platt

Tony, GRAMMY and Emmy Award winner Ben Platt made his highly anticipated return to the New York Stage as Leo Frank in Parade at the City Center which transitioned to the Broadway stage. The riveting musical opened to rave reviews and led to Platt's second Tony Award nomination. Most recently Ben starred in the film Theater Camp, which is co-written by Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman inspired by their popular 2020 short film by the same name. An accomplished recording artist, Platt has released two albums previously – 2019's Sing To Me and 2021's Reverie. He completed a hugely successful solo tour following the release of Reverie which saw him headlining sellout crowds at such important venues as The Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Garden and others. His third album, Honeymind, produced by 9x GRAMMY Award winner Dave Cobb, was released May 31, 2024. Platt won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his groundbreaking performance as Evan in Dear Evan Hansen and later went on to reprise his role in the Universal film adaptation, alongside Julianne Moore and Amy Adams. Ben starred in the highly popular Netflix series by Ryan Murphy, The Politician where he served as the executive producer on the series – his performance in Season 1 earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and the show received a nomination for Best Comedy. Additionally, Platt began filming alongside Beanie Feldstein, Merrily We Roll Along which will be shot over a 20 year period, directed by Richard Linklater. Last fall, Platt was seen in the Amazon film, The People We Hate at The Wedding alongside Allison Janney and Kristen Bell. Other film and TV highlights include; Pitch Perfect 1 & 2, Ricky & the Flash, The Premise and a guest appearance on Will & Grace.

Members of Orchestra of St. Luke's, New York's own chamber orchestra, will accompany Jason and his guests with their virtuosic 22-piece ensemble. The evening will be conducted by Jason Robert Brown and Georgia Stitt.

For ticketing information and further details, please contact CarnegieCharge at (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org, or visit the Box Office on 57th Street and Seventh Avenue.

About Jason Robert Brown

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.

This year has seen the premieres of two new JRB musicals: The Connector, created with Jonathan Marc Sherman and Daisy Prince, which completed a triumphant run at New York's MCC Theater in April; and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, written with Taylor Mac based on John Berendt's book and directed by Rob Ashford, currently running at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. (The Concord original cast recording of The Connector, already a best-seller on the Billboard cast albums chart, was released on June 21.)

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.  Jason's score for The Bridges of Madison County, a musical adapted with Marsha Norman from the bestselling novel, received two Tony Awards (for Best Score and Orchestrations). Honeymoon In Vegas, based on Andrew Bergman's film, opened on Broadway in 2015 following a sell-out run at Paper Mill Playhouse.  A film version of his epochal Off-Broadway musical The Last Five Years was released in 2015, 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 opened on Broadway on 2008 and became a celebrated Netflix musical in 2022; 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 later 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 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 has since been seen in hundreds of productions around the world since its 1995 Off-Broadway debut, including a celebrated revival at New York's City Center in the summer of 2018.  Parade was also the subject of two major revivals: the first, directed by Rob Ashford, at London's Donmar Warehouse and then at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; and the second, Michael Arden's Tony-winning 2023 Broadway production starring Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond. In 2022, Jason collaborated with comedy legend Billy Crystal on a Broadway musical of Mr. Saturday Night with lyrics by Amanda Green and a book by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel.  Jason conducted his orchestral adaptation of E.B. White's novel “The Trumpet of the Swan” with the National Symphony Orchestra, and recorded the score for PS Classics. 

As a soloist or with his band, Jason has performed concerts around the world.  For six years, his monthly sold-out performances at New York's SubCulture featured many of the music and theater world's most extraordinary performers, including a sold-out concert at Town Hall with Stephen Sondheim. His newest collection, “Coming From Inside the House,” featuring Ariana Grande and Shoshana Bean, commemorates the final SubCulture concert, recorded remotely during the pandemic. His previous albums, “How We React and How We Recover” and “Wearing Someone Else's Clothes” are available from Ghostlight/Sh-K-Boom Records. 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,” broadcast live from the London Palladium and featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra.  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 the Broadway revival of You Can't Take It With You, David Lindsay-Abaire's Kimberly Akimbo and Fuddy Meers, and Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery, 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 Nickelodeon television series “The Wonder Pets,” as well as “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.

For the musical Prince of Broadway, a celebration of the career of his mentor Harold Prince, Jason was the musical supervisor and arranger.  Jason studied composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., with Samuel Adler, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner.  He lives with his wife, composer Georgia Stitt, and their daughters in Nyack, New York.  Jason is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the American Federation of Musicians Local 802.  Visit him on the web at www.jasonrobertbrown.com.