Interview: Tony Winning Composer Jason Robert Brown

This Saturday night, The Angel in Nyack is hosting a very special event:  a benefit for the Proyecto Faro (an immigrant-led grassroots organization allied with immigrant and non-immigrant religious and secular communities and organizations to build support for and action among those in Rockland County who feel insecure due to their immigration status. )

The brilliant Broadway composer Jason Robert Brown has assembled a star-studded evening of Broadway’s best and brightest stars for the occasion.   Mr. Brown is a Tony-winning, composer, lyricist, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, director, and performer.  His canon of beloved works include The Last Five Years, Parade and Bridges of Madison County.  He sat down with BroadwayWorld to chat about the event.

Hi Jason, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us.  This sounds like a really wonderful evening.   What inspired you to lend your voice and your music to this particular charity?

I have to tell you, I think I’m generally a hopeful person. You know, not naive, but I do have that core belief that people are inherently drawn to take care of each other, to protect each other. And I think I sound kind of stupid when I say this, but I mean it: I didn’t know I lived in a cruel country. The evidence has been plentiful and obvious, but that faith I have in human nature blinded me to that element in the American soil that’s just cruel and ruthless and mean. And you can’t avoid the meanness of the last twelve months, the relentless awful disrespect, nastiness, hatred that’s being spewed, and particularly at immigrants, particularly at those who came here looking for help, for opportunity. It’s demoralizing and infuriating, but what’s most exhausting about it all is the feeling that I have no power to stop it, no tools with which I can combat this wantonly evil behavior. But I do have a tool, it turns out, and that tool is my voice, which I can use to amplify the work of other people who are out there every day doing the most necessary, the most kind, the most deeply human work in the world, lifting up the people who are falling, who are being pushed down. Proyecto Faro is lifting up the immigrant community in this county, and being able to help them any way I can is the only thing that has made me feel hopeful about this time we are in. I am so moved by what they do, and I am so honored to be able to shine a light on their mission and hopefully get some desperately needed funds into their hands.

How did you approach crafting a program for this concert? Are there specific songs you chose because they speak to themes of journey, hope, or belonging?

If there’s any throughline in my body of work, it’s this idea of building community, of making connection. I think I write about it so often because I know how important it is and I know how bad I am at it, how my default is to isolate. The only time it’s easy to connect – not just easy, but sort of automatic, like breathing – is when I’m making music. This concert is all about making connection, and the songs all speak directly or obliquely to that idea, although it’s also a collection of basically my favorite songs I’ve written over the course of my career. For me it’s a real opportunity to make a connection with this community that my family moved into four years ago. I grew up here in Rockland County, but I moved away the minute I graduated high school, and never thought I’d return. It’s so meaningful to me to be re-establishing my connection to this place, to be putting down new roots here, and to be embraced by a world that is only 45 minutes away from the city but, in so many ways, is a different world. I’ve got a couple of new songs I’ll be doing, pieces from new shows that are in process, as well as a lot of what I think are highlights from the past thirty years.

Tell us about the collaborators / guest performers joining you.

My stuff is hard to sing, it’s hard to act, so I’m very picky about who I bring on stage with me. Sierra and I met because of Hal Prince, who adored her; I wrote her a crazy arrangement of “Buenos Aires” and realized she could basically sing anything. We’ve built a role in Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil for her because she’s just a wonderful comedienne with a gorgeous voice, which is a lethal combination.

I met Joy Woods just a couple of months ago – I had seen her in The Notebook and Gypsy and was just constantly astonished by her, and then she joined the cast of the 30th Anniversary production of Songs for a New World in London and it was really amazing to watch her bring these songs to life. She’s twenty-six years old and just in complete mastery of her artistry. I’m so inspired by what she does.

And Grace McLean is a phenomenon. She’s a total musician, a real risk-taker, an exceptional composer in her own right, and completely unique. There is no one who sings like Grace and no one who thinks like Grace, and what she brings to my music elevates it to a whole other level.

And that’s just the singers – Alison Shearer is one of the most important young reed players in jazz, playing with Kurt Elling and Nate Smith and Sunny Jain and Red Baraat and releasing her own music, she’s a thrilling soloist; and Sam Minaie is a bass player’s bass player, playing with Tigran Hamasyan and Donny McCaslin and Charlie Haden, I love what he does with my songs, it’s a real joy. I’ve been playing with Hiddy Honari for a couple of years now, just a master guitarist with amazing ears and the best riffs; and my drummer Jamie Eblen has been playing with me for almost twenty years, I’ve watched him grow from a precocious kid in the San Fernando Valley to one of the most in-demand players in the country. If I hadn’t given him a gig when he was 15, I don’t think I’d be able to afford him now, but thank goodness I did!

BroadwayWorld would like to thank Jason Robert Brown for chatting with us and we wish him success with his concert this weekend.   

• The Angel Nyack, 18 S. Broadway Nyack NY 10960
• Date: December 6
• Time: 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm