Jason Robert Brown Returns to Birdland, Sept. 11

Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown, whose new musical 13 will begin previews at LA's Mark Taper Forum in December, will return to Birdland on September 11th at 7 PM for a new concert.

Backed by the Caucasian Rhythm Kings, Brown will perform alongside jazz singer Kate McGarry.  The show will feature some new material by Brown.

13 will begin previews on December 22nd, 2006, and run through February 18th, 2007. With music and lyrics by Brown and a book by Dan Elish, it will be directed by Todd Graff. 13 concerns 13 thirteen year-olds making the perilous trek from childhood into adolescence at a middle school in Appleton, Indiana.

With The Last Five Years, Brown won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics. Brown received a 1999 Tony Award for his score to Parade, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre in December 1998, subsequently winning both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best New Musical. Parade was also presented on a National Tour in 2000, which Brown conducted. Songs for a New World opened Off-Broadway at the WPA Theatre in the fall of 1995, and has since been seen in more than two hundred productions around the world. Brown provided the orchestrations and contributed songs to Urban Cowboy, as well as handling the arrangements and musical direction. He is the winner of the 2002 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Foundation Award for Musical Theatre. Brown's songs, including the cabaret standard "Stars and the Moon," have been performed and recorded by Audra McDonald, Betty Buckley, Karen Akers, Renée Fleming, Philip Quast, Jon Hendricks and many others. "Wearing Someone Else's Clothes" is his recently-released solo CD (available on Sh-K-Boom Records).

Brown will also perform in Toronto on October 16th, Santa Rosa, CA on October 21st (with Amy Ryder), and Birmingham, AL in November.

Tickets to the Birdland show are $35; call 212-581-3050 for tickets.  Visit www.jasonrobertbrown.com for more information.  For more on McGarry, visit www.katemcgarry.com.