Kennedy, Benanti, Colella to Join Brown at Birdland

According to Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown's April newsletter, three leading ladies will join Brown for his upcoming concert at Birdland.  Brown will play a special week-long run at Birdland, April 4th - 7th, with shows at 9 and 11pm nightly. 

Brown and his band, The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, will be joined by Lauren Kennedy (Spamalot, Side Show) on Wednesday, April 4th at 9 pm and 11 pm, Tony-nominee Laura Benanti (The Wedding Singer, Nine) on Thursday, April 5th and Friday April 6th at 9 pm and 11 pm, and Jenn Colella (High Fidelity, Urban Cowboy) on Saturday, April 7th at 9 pm and 11 pm.  The concert is part of "Broadway at Birdland," an ongoing series of events featuring top Broadway stars and songwriters at the legendary club (315 West 44th Street, NYC).  Jim Caruso's Cast Party and TheaterMania.com present.

Brown and the evening's guest will perform songs from Songs for a New World, Parade, The Last Five Years, Urban Cowboy, 13, his upcoming musical Honeymoon in Vegas, his album"Wearing Someone Else's Clothes" and "The Jason Robert Brown Collection."

Brown is the composer and lyricist of the musical, The Last Five Years, which was cited as one of Time Magazine's10 Best of 2001 and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics.  He won a 1999 Tony Award for his score to 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 Critics' Circle Awards for Best New Musical.  Parade was also presented on a national tour in 2000, which Jason conducted.  His 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 two hundred productions around the world. Brown is the winner of the 2002 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Foundation Award for Musical Theatre. His songs, including the cabaret standard "Stars and Moon," have been performed and recorded by Audra McDonald, Betty Buckley, Karen Akers, Renée Fleming, Philip Quast, Jon Hendricks and many others.

Brown's first solo album, "Wearing Someone Else's Clothes," featuring his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, is available from Sh-K-Boom Records.  His collaboration with singer Lauren Kennedy, "Songs of Jason Robert Brown," is available on PS Classics.  His piano sonata, "Mr. Broadway" was commissioned and premiered by Anthony De Mare at Carnegie Hall.  His most recent theater project, 13, a musical comedy written with Dan Elish, was developed for the Los Angeles Center Theatre Group.  He is also the composer of the incidental music for 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.  Brown currently teaches musical theater performance and composition at the University of Southern California.  For more information, please visit www.JasonRobertBrown.com

Birdland is located at 315 West 44 Street.  Admission is $35 plus $10 food/drink minimum.  Call 212-581-3080 or visit www.InstantSeats.com/Birdland for reservations.