Broadway star Jason Robert Brown to appear at TCU festival

Ask any aficionado of musical theater their favorite recording from the past 25 years, and you’re likely to hear Jason Robert Brown’s 1995 song cycle Songs for a New World.

For them, that original cast album is on perpetual spin. Every one of its 16 story-songs are still savored — notably the Kurt Weill-channeling Surabaya-Santa and the phenomenal Stars and the Moon — not to mention recorded on dozens of traditional vocalists’ solo albums, including those of Betty Buckley and Audra McDonald.

Considering the show’s title, which speaks of an American experience, it’s fitting that Brown is the guest at the second annual Festival of American Song at Texas Christian University. Last year’s event featured one of Brown’s much-admired contemporaries and a master of the song cycle and opera, Ricky Ian Gordon.

“The title of the event really says what it is,” says founding director Angela Turner Wilson, who is assistant professor of professional practice in voice at TCU. “I wanted it to be a living composer of American song.”

Turner had wanted to create such a festival for years, especially at a university with renowned piano and choral camps and institutes. When the proposal received a Vision in Action grant, it became possible.

Of course, it’s not enough to have just a celebration of the composer’s work; the goal is to have said composer participate in the event.

Like Gordon last year, Brown is on board. The festival has three events Saturday and Sunday. A free master class with Brown will be at 1 p.m. Saturday, followed by a concert with Brown and others singing his songs, accompanied and moderated by Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra principal keyboardist Shields-Collins “Buddy” Bray at 7 p.m.

At 2 p.m. Sunday, the event closes with TCU voice students and Brown delving into his catalog.

It was originally announced that the festival would include a new song by Brown written for the occasion, but Wilson says that because of timing, he was unable to work that in.

Not that anyone’s complaining. Since Songs for a New World ran off-Broadway, Brown has remained in demand, even if a box-office hit has eluded him.

His two most recent works to appear on Broadway, The Bridges of Madison County (2014) and Honeymoon in Vegas (2015), each ran for about three months, which was a month longer than his 2003 Broadway show, Urban Cowboy.

Three months was also the length of his youth musical 13 in 2008, as well as one of his most acclaimed works, Parade, in 1998. For that, as well as Bridges, he won a Tony Award for best score.

Regardless, he has remained a go-to songwriter, arranger, orchestrator and composer of incidental music. Another one of this shows that’s oft-cited as a musical lover’s fave is the two-character The Last Five Years, an early work that was made into a movie starring Anna Kendrick, released in 2014.

Wilson’s students are mostly on a classical/opera track, but she says they continually ask to study Brown’s songs.

“His music is emotionally charged, highly melodic and very intelligent,” she says. “[Students] feel like he’s speaking to the current young person in love. Or the current person going through major changes.”

“There are some songs I don’t assign my students, because in their 18 to 20 years of living there’s no way they can understand it,” she adds, which gives her a reason to perform one of her favorite Brown tunes. “A song like Stars and the Moon is more relevant to a woman in her 40s.”

For future festivals, she has her wish list for guests, which include musical-theater names like Lin-Manuel Miranda (who’s gonna be busy for awhile considering the mega success of his current Broadway show, Hamilton) as well as jazz (Norah Jones) and Americana (Lyle Lovett).

“It could be jazz, blues, musical theater, opera,” she says. “As long as it is something coming from the human voice and is relevant to American song.”

This story was originally published July 30, 2015 at 10:12 AM with the headline "Broadway star Jason Robert Brown to appear at TCU festival."