Jason Robert Brown with Grace McLean

A concert series curated by the renowned Tony Award-winning composer, lyricist, conductor, and director, Jason Robert Brown. Each unique performance will incorporate an eclectic mix of material, featuring music from throughout his acclaimed career, along with new works in development.  

Special guests in past performances from this series have included Kelli O’Hara, Steve Pasquale, Norbert Leo Butz, Tom Kitt, Tony Danza, Laura Benanti, Cynthia Erivo, Tituss Burgess, Lena Hall, Ana Gasteyer, LaChanze, Shaina Taub, Megan Hilty, Eden Espinosa, Norm Lewis, Sierra Boggess, Mykal Kilgore, Betsy Wolfe, Shoshana Bean, Philippa Soo, and more! This performance features Grace McLean.*

JASON ROBERT BROWN is the ultimate multi-hyphenate – composer, lyricist, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, director and performer – best known for his dazzling scores to several of the most renowned musicals of his generation, including The Bridges of Madison County, for which Jason received the 2014 Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Orchestrations; the seminal chamber musical The Last Five Years, now a feature film starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan; his debut song cycle Songs for a New World; and Parade, winner of the 1999 Best Score Tony. The New York Times refers to Jason as “a leading member of a new generation of composers who embody high hopes for the American musical.”

His other musicals include Honeymoon In Vegas and 13, a film version of which is currently in development.  His “novel symphony” The Trumpet of the Swan has been performed by the National Symphony Orchestra and around the world. Jason conducted Parade at Avery Fisher Hall in an all-star concert performance in February, 2015, and he is in the midst of recording a followup to his solo album, Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes. His sold-out series of concerts at the Abrons Arts Center in 2012 yielded a television special and accompanying album, Jason Robert Brown In Concert With Anika Noni Rose.

Jason studied composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., with Samuel Adler, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner.  He lives with his wife, composer Georgia Stitt, and their daughters in New York City.  Jason is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the American Federation of Musicians Local 802 & 47.  Visit him on the web at www.jasonrobertbrown.com.

Called “electrifying” by The Huffington Post and “phenomenal” by The New York Times, GRACE McLEAN is a multi-hyphenate actress-singer-writer-teacher on the rise. In addition to performing in the Broadway hit Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Grace also makes time for her acclaimed original music, both as a solo artist and with her band Grace McLean & Them Apples. With a sound that combines Regina Spektor's quirkiness, Nellie McKay's jazz sensibilities, Fiona Apple's irreverence, Kimbra's sass and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs' rhythm, McLean adds up to one beautiful weirdo. Manhattan User's Guide writes, "this pop and jazz singer writes seriously infectious melodies with seriously antic lyrics. Her voice can raise the roof, or she can slide off a note and break your heart,” and Stephen Holden of the New York Times says “Ms. McLean’s voice [is] a flexiible instrument with unexpected reserves of power...Behind her playful adventurousness lies a well of passion.”

Grace was a headlining performer and vocal instructor at the SingStrong a capella festivals in DC and Chicago in 2014 and in 2015 her band participated in a US State Department sponsored tour of Pakistan. Grace McLean & Them Apples headlined the Lincoln Center American Songbook in both 2015 and 2016, and Grace is the 2017 recipient of the Hunt Family Emerging Artist Award through Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Grace’s work as a performer and educator has taken her to Jamaica, Scotland, Italy, Croatia, Serbia and Pakistan.  In New York, you can find her and her band at Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, Rockwood Music Hall, Ars Nova (where she developed the interactive concert experience Grace McLean: Lives in Concert), and the Museum of the American Indian, where they performed as part of a panel discussion on storytelling for The Economist’s 2012 Ideas Summit. As a solo performer Grace has been seen at Lincoln Center, New York City Center, The McKittrick, BAM, the ACE Hotel (where she collaborates monthly with The Dance Cartel’s show OnTheFloor) and numerous other venues both uptown and downtown. She is also a frequent contributor to Obie winning investagative theater company The Civilians’ cabaret series “Let Me Ascertain You.”

McLean has developed work at CAP21, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Orchard Project, Johnny Mercer Writer’s Colony at Goodspeed, and her pop opera about 12th century mystic Hildegard von Bingen has been commissioned by Lincoln Center Theater. Grace released her newest EP in May 2015, featuring the single, and her first feature video, “Natural Disaster".  The band will release a new full length album in 2017. Make Me Breakfast, the 2012 EP from Grace McLean & Them Apples, is available on iTunes now. Find out more at www.gracemclean.com

*Guests are subject to change