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News From Jason Robert Brown: A Letter to Fans
By: BWW News Desk Dec. 24, 2005
Hello, most wonderful people!
This e-mail represents a milestone: it is the final e-mail I will send to this list from the newyorkrock@mindspring.com address. If you have not already signed up for the jasonrobertbrown.com mailing list, you can go right to jasonrobertbrown.com and
put your e-mail address in the little box and then you'll get a
confirmation e-mail shortly thereafter. So if you want to keep in
touch with me about all happenings JRB, then make sure you're signed up
for the new mailing list. (Most of you already are, but there are a
couple thousand slackers out there.)
Now that
that bit of business is over, allow me to apologize for being out of
touch since September. It's been a wonderful and exhausting year, and
those of you wondering why I haven't been in touch for the last three
months may be relieved to find out that I've been traveling to Kansas
City, San Antonio, New York, Los Angeles, and London; performing with
Emily Skinner, Julia Murney, Lauren Kennedy, Frances Ruffelle, Joanna
Riding, Eric Marienthal, Katie Marienthal, Tierney Sutton, Jessica
Molaskey, a big black drummer with dreads named Bubba, forty students
from the Boston University School of Music, sixteen students from the
Royal Academy of Music, the ten best theater singers in the city of
Boston, and the legendary Caucasian Rhythm Kings; and appearing on Ned
Sherrin's show on the BBC and Jonathan Schwartz's Christmas show on XM
Satellite Radio. My "Chanukah Suite" for chorus was premiered by the
Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall. Also, I've been finishing
up my semester teaching at USC (I start again on January 9, teaching
composition for musical theater), writing songs for my shows, working
on my next album, and ... something else, I know I'm forgetting
something.
Oh, right, we had an adorable, precious and undoubtedly musical baby girl. Anybody wanna babysit?
So
it's been an amazingly busy and extraordinarily wonderful year, and
2006 looks to be just as exciting, especially if my wife and I can ever
get to sleep. Here's a couple of things I can tell you about now, but
I'll send you a more detailed e-mail from the new website just after
the first of the year:
The anthology Songs of
Jason Robert Brown is currently scheduled to be released by Hal
Leonard Music Publishing on February 15! The songs included are: "Stars
and the Moon," "Just One Step," "I'm Not Afraid of Anything," "Hear My Song,"
"The Old Red Hills of Home," "You Don't Know This Man," "All The Wasted
Time," "The Picture Show," "Moving Too Fast," "A Summer in Ohio," "The Next Ten
Minutes," "See I'm Smiling," "Mr. Hopalong Heartbreak," "It Don't Get Better
Than This," "And I Will Follow," "Letting You Go," "Dreaming Wide Awake," "If I
Told You Now," "Someone to Fall Back On," "Getting Out," "I Could Be In Love
With Someone Like You," "Nothing In Common," "Coming Together," and "Grow Old
With Me." (Whew!)
The Center Theater Group of
Los Angeles is producing a workshop of my new show, 13, written with
Dan Elish and directed by Todd Graff. We go into rehearsal at the end
of January for a three-week process; casting starts in two weeks! We
should probably finish writing the show.
Reprise!,
the L.A. musical theater producing entity, is doing a one-night-only
concert of The Last Five Years on January 30 at UCLA's Freud
Playhouse, as part of their Marvelous Musical Mondays series. Playing
the role of Jamie will be ... me. Playing the role of Cathy will be...
well, I hoped to be able to tell you that in this e-mail, but it's not
settled yet. You can go to reprise.org for details on buying tickets etc.
I'm
doing a crazy week of masterclasses in January: Otterbein College in
Columbus OH on 1/20, Baldwin-Wallace in Cleveland OH on 1/21, and
Oklahoma City University on 1/24.
Several of
my songs will be performed alongside my piano sonata "Mr. Broadway" at
Symphony Space on February 2. It's a very groovy program, focussing on
writers who create work for the musical theater as well as the concert
hall; the other featured writers are George Gershwin, Vernon Duke and
Stephen Schwartz (whoever they are), and the performers include
Shoshana Bean, Darius de Haas, Judy Blazer, Rebecca Luker, Emily
Skinner, Ron Raines, the Ying Quartet, and Joshua Rosenblum. The
entire evening is hosted by Rob Fisher, and it really sucks that I
won't be able to make it because it sounds ultra-cool, but if you can
go, just check it out at symphonyspace.org .
Upcoming
concerts: February 26 in Ventura, CA; March 4 in Alberta, Canada; April
1 in Syracuse. And we're negotiating right now about Springfield, MO;
Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA; Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY; and Las
Vegas, NV. So keep your ears peeled. We've got lots of news coming,
as well as plenty of masterclasses and lectures in the months ahead.
It's
always worth pointing out for you last-minute (or later) gift-givers
that the works of Jason Robert Brown can be enjoyed by man, woman, or
beast, and are available at all fine Internet portals such as sh-k-boom.com , Amazon.com , and sheetmusicplus.com .
And
of course, finally, JasonRobertBrown.com will be going live sometime in
January. If it doesn't, you should write to Ivan Askwith at design@ivanaskwith.com
, and register your displeasure. Once you see it, though, you'll want
to write to him and tell him how gorgeous it is; we're setting up a
really great site, very informative and entertaining. You'll get a
message about that when it's ready to go. And those of you Friendster
freaks, I'm always happy to hear from you too. (I suppose I should do
a MySpace thing one of these days, but I just can't get excited about
it yet.)
So that's some of what's been going
on with me. I hope you all have a sensational holiday and a
magnificent New Year, and I look forward to seeing you and hearing from
you all in 2006!
All best,
Jason
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