VIDEO: Shaina Taub Sings Powerful Gun Violence Plea 'When' at City Center Encores! Off-Center JAMBOREE

Earlier this month, the City Center Encores! Off-Center JAMBOREE, which starred Sutton Foster and Jonathan Groff, entertained a packed house with an assortment of fun song-and-dance moments, peppered with bits of poignancy.

One of the most emotional presentations of the evening came late in the second half, when Shaina Taub, backed by a video screen reminding us of all-too-familiar images, sang her gun-violence plea, "When."

Taub describes the song as "half-lament, half-rallying cry," and originally wrote it shortly after the Sandy Hook shootings.

"I continued writing it in the aftermath of a seemingly endless wave of shootings," she explains, "and one question persisted as I wrote: 'When will this ever end?' With each new headline, the answer seemed inevitably to be, 'Never.'"

Shaina Taub is a Vermont-raised, New York-based songwriter and performer. Winner of a Jonathan Larson Grant and Ars Nova's 2012 Composer-in-Residence, she made her Lincoln Center solo concert debut in their 2015 American Songbook series. Her musical adaptation of TWELFTH NIGHT, commissioned by The Public Theater, conceived with and directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, will be presented this summer at the Delacorte Theater as part of their Public Works initiative. She wrote songs for and co-starred in Bill Irwin and David Shiner's OLD HATS, directed by Tina Landau at the Signature Theatre and A.C.T.. She earned a Lucille LortelAward nomination as Princess Mary in NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812, performed and arranged the songs of Tom Waits in A.R.T.'s production of THE TEMPEST, directed by Teller of Penn & Teller, and sang with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in her psycho-opera, STOP THE VIRGENS, at St. Ann's Warehouse and the Sydney Opera House.Audra McDonald currently performs Taub's song, "Bear & Otter," in concert. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Yaddo Colony, and The Sundance Institute, and is a songwriter for "Sesame Street." Taub is currently writing a new musical about Alice Paul and the American women's suffrage movement. Her new album, "Visitors," is available now. Visit shainataub.com.