Posted on May 1, 2007 at 11:26 pm
The title of this entry is based on an entirely unjustified optimism that I’ll do one of these every month. Wagers are being taken.
Marshman 21 wants to know:
I was just wondering why you changed George Epps’s name to Frankie Epps for Parade? Simple, probably stupid question, but I thought that there was no harm in asking it.
JRB say:
A couple of people have asked me this over the years. It’s a logical question. We also changed the name of one of the police officers; his real name was Rogers, we changed it to Ivey. That was a tribute to Dana Ivey, one of Alfred Uhry’s muses. But why, you may ask, did we change George Epps to Frankie? Was there some specific thing about “George” that felt inauthentic, cheesy, cheap? Did we want to make his name closer to “Frank” for ironic resonance? Why? Why? Why?
It breaks my heart to write these words: I think it was an accident. My suspicion is that Alfred just typed “Frankie” because he got confused and didn’t bother to look at the source material, and I re-typed it into the master script, and that was it. He was re-baptized. The evidence suggests that the real George Epps was a snivelling, lying sack of shit, but that’s no excuse for disrespecting his name. Sorry, Georgie. We’re not changing it back, but I’m sorry.
I’m writing this as though I’ve discussed it with Alfred, but I haven’t, or at least I don’t recall discussing it with him. Anyway, he’s in previews now with a new show, so I’m not going to bother him with it. The point is, whatever the reason George’s name got changed, it isn’t particularly important to the concept of the show.
Ryan Moody dares to ask:
I was wondering if you do weddings? I haven’t asked my girlfriend, yet, but she absolutely loves your music. We saw you live when you can to Birmingham last year, and she almost bursted with joy and excitement. Our song is ” Someone to Fall Back On.” It’ll be a while before we tie the knot, but I was just wondering.
JRB say:
No.
Well, let me qualify that: I can be persuaded to do lots of things if it means a bigger balance in my daughter’s bank account. If, when you’re putting together your budget for your wedding, you end up with an extra twenty grand or so that you can’t wait to get rid of, and you want me to come to Alabama to sing one song, well, we might be able to work something out. But really, honestly, it takes a lot to get me on an airplane these days. I am burned out from the traveling, people. In the next month, I go to New York for a week, Washington DC for a week, back home to LA for a week, London for a week, then back home for two weeks before I have to do more traveling. Not to mention I’m going to be in London all of August and September for Parade. I have done enough shlepping for a lifetime, and it’s not going to ease up any time soon, alas.
UPDATE: Now my wife made me feel bad about writing this, like I sound like an arrogant, ungrateful asshole. Which is not the first time I’ve been accused of that. The point is, of course I’m flattered and honored that you want me to sing at your wedding, but having had a couple of weddings myself, I can’t imagine that what you want is for your special moment to be intruded upon by a big Jew screaming some maudlin ballad and hogging the spotlight. I’d suggest just having your wedding band play it, but that might be distracting in other ways. At any rate, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad just for asking a sweet question; ask whatever you want, I’m trying to learn to be a nicer person, it’s a process. Sorry, sorry.
Peter Sloterdyk burns with a need to know:
I am a composition student in the Music School at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. I have written two musicals so far in my life, and often look to your work for inspiration. The reason I am writing to you is because I am curious about your status as a teacher at University of Southern California. You are not on their website… anywhere? I am interested in applying there for graduate work, but pretty much only if the opportunity to study with you is still available. Are you still teaching there, as your bio states, or has that relationship been terminated?
JRB saith:
I love teaching at USC. I just finished a great semester with a wonderful group of young actors. It’s hard work, but gratifying. As for why I’m not on the USC website, I can think of a couple of possible reasons, but nothing very interesting. The main thing is that I don’t teach every semester; when I can fit it into my schedule, I teach, and when I can’t, I don’t. The folks at the School of Theatre have been very gracious about accommodating my schedule. So, for example, I won’t be teaching there next semester because I’ll be in London for the first two months of the school year. None of this matters to you anyway, because the fact of the matter is that I don’t teach graduate students. I’m told that the graduate playwriting program is really great, I’ve met some of the kids, they seem smart and talented, but I only work with undergrads. It’s possible that I’ll open my work up to the grads in the future, but at the moment, that program is pretty tightly regimented and there isn’t a whole lot of room for me anyway. So: if you’re coming to LA to work with me, don’t bother. But if you’re looking for a great school with a great faculty, USC may be exactly what you’re looking for.
Chris Fritzsche, on similar lines, demands:
In the Fall (06) you gave a workshop at Sonoma State University where I teach. I was very impressed with you, the way you worked with the students, and your grasp of song interpretations. Thank you so much! You mentioned in passing what composers and songs you assign to young singers and then a list of composers as they progress which I thought was very useful. I apologize for not writing it down at the time. Would you mind repeating it here to enlighten me?
JRB blushes and responds:
First of all, thanks for the kind words. As I mentioned above, I do love working with young actors. I find that very few teachers or professionals talk about how to make music – there’s a lot about character, about intention, about technique, but rarely do I hear anyone talk to students about the vitally significant concept of singing musically and making musical choices. In order to introduce students to that concept, I find it’s best to start out with material that demands a real sensitivity to phrasing and structure.
What I’ve done in the past is to ask all my students to bring in four songs at the beginning of the semester. The first song must have been written between 1930 and 1945. The second song must be from 1945-1965. The third song must be from 1965 to the present, and the fourth song can be anything of their own choosing. Even within those guidelines, I’ve begun restricting the choices even further: the first song must be by Gershwin, Porter, Kern or Berlin, and the second song must be by Bernstein, Arlen, Styne, Loesser, Weill or Rodgers. Not that those are by any means the only composers whose work would be appropriate, but it helps the students find songs when I shrink the pool somewhat; and of course having such a stellar roster of composers to choose from cuts down (to a certain extent) on the dud songs.
Then I teach the students to analyze each song structurally, and consider each section as having one musical intention or character. Is the first A smooth, lyrical? Then the second A should be tougher, more jagged. How are you phrasing the line? Where are you breathing? What kind of instrument would play this phrase – a cello, a trumpet? Let’s start without lyrics – how do you tell the story without the words?
Once I’ve gotten the students used to making musical choices, we figure out together how to wed those choices to specific emotional intentions. There are obviously other methods of teaching musical theater performance, but my method makes sense to me and my students seem to respond to it. If any of my former kids are reading, I’d appreciate you dropping a comment below and letting us know your thoughts about what it was like working with me.
Scott Robinson can’t live without determining:
I am preparing to direct Parade at the Buck Creek Playhouse in June of this year, and was wondering if “The Dream of Atlanta” was an original composition by you, or is it an actual historic Atlanta theme?
JRB gets on his high horse and says:
Well, I’m enormously flattered that you asked this question. “The Dream of Atlanta” is wholly and entirely original. It was the second thing I wrote for Parade, and I have always been proud of it – I hadn’t written much “pastiche” music before, and I really enjoyed the challenge of making something that had to sound exactly right for the place and the period. I actually started with the last line: “Not a star to the sky could be nearer/Than my heart is, Atlanta, to thee!” It felt very much like a line Eulalie McKechnie Shinn would say. There are two reasons that the song is so convincing: it’s only a minute long, and Sebesky’s orchestration is absolutely perfect.
Peter de Mets cries in the night with curiosity:
I’ve music directed two productions of Songs for a New World and have found that both directors seemed to feel that the order of the songs needed to be changed in their production… After much arguing, I found that, other than “That is the way Jason Robert Brown wrote it,” I would rather have the paycheck and the opportunity to conduct (and play) your material than argue with the director.
Is the order of the material in Songs for a New World important to your conception of the show?
JRB quakes with fury and screams:
For fuck’s sake, people! If you like the show so much that you decide to direct it at your theater, why can’t you just do it the way I wrote it? I knew what I was doing when I put those songs in that order to be sung by those characters. I already ranted about this in this blog from September, but it continues to come up all the time. Lately, I’ve been dealing with similar issues in translations of the shows, but I’ll save that for another post.
And Amanda Miller, cuter than the proverbial button, puckishly points out:
I’m accompanying “I’m Not Afraid of Anything” for a friend in a few weeks and discovered a missing beat in the music. In the Songs for a New World book, it’s page 27, top system, last measure, right before the phrase “growing old or going out of style.” What is supposed to be on beat four?
JRB sheepishly replies:
That sound you just heard was a proofreader at Hal Leonard stabbing himself in the eyeball with a mechanical pencil. The beat is only missing in the left hand, and the problem is that the first note in the measure, a half-note D, should actually be a dotted half-note D. One small dot and lives are ruined. Everyone, get out your pencils and mark the third measure on page 27. Thank you, Amanda.
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Posted on June 14, 2007 at 4:20 pm
It’s no big deal to admit this: I have been known to spend hours searching for my name online. I have been known to do this every day. Most days, the rewards are negligible. Some days, however, there’s this:
Anyway, back to the Planet Earth.
Or not. As the title of this entry proclaims, I am turning 37 in less than a week. I have absolutely no problems with this; I love being old enough that people think I know what I’m talking about, and I love that I’m still younger than Michael John LaChiusa. Win-win, as they say. Some people, however, apparently think I’m a little older.
Logan Culwell, in only the latest of three hundred emails to me, asks:
I have a composer demo of Smile by Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Ashman. I’m pretty sure one of the guys on it is Howard himself and the other one… I swear… sounds EXACTLY like you do on that Parade demo. Were you ever involved with that show and/or the demo?
JRB, patiently but with tension in his jaw, smiles and says:
Logan, Logan, sweet Logan. Smile opened on Broadway in 1986. I’m going to assume that the demo was made before the show opened. Let’s just say 1985. Was I involved with Smile in 1985?
My voice hadn’t even changed in 1985, Logan! I was fifteen years old! Elaine Flynn wouldn’t have rejected me if I were involved with a big Broadway musical! (Oh, yes, I’m still pissed off about Elaine Flynn, twenty-two years later. I asked her to the prom and she said no, but now I just found out she asked my friend Gene to go with her instead … and HE’S GAY. Oh, the story never ends.) Let me tell you, if I could have even hung around big Broadway composers when I was fifteen years old, I would have given up Skittles. But no, I kept eating the Skittles and I just had a root canal three days ago. I take back what I said about enjoying getting older. Apparently, I’m just finding new exciting things to be bitter about.
Simone Becque, having too much time on her hands, asks:
I just was noticing how a lot of your songs (especially in Songs For A New World) have a lot of boating / water themes. Do you just like the metaphors (I know I do) or were you ever a big boat/water person?
JRB responds, a little too loudly:
I CAN’T SWIM.
Looking to expand her audition book, Andrea Liacos smiles coyly and writes:
Saw you last week at Birdland with a friend. By far and away one of the most enjoyable cabaret style nights we’ve had in a LONG time! Kudos! Where, if anywhere, if ever, can I find a copy of the song in the first set – I want to say “One More Thing Than I Can Handle”?
JRB, who always hates to disappoint a fan, sadly utters:
I’m so glad you like that song, it’s one of my favorites that I’ve written, and it’s especially fun to play. But it’ll be a while before it’s “out in the world.” I’m hoping to include it in a recording project I’m working on that will perhaps be ready some time next summer. Until then, I’ll program it on my concerts as often as I can find someone who can sing it (Benanti did a gorgeous job with it, and I wrote it for the sensational Kate McGarry), so keep coming to the shows; with any luck, you’ll be able to hear it there.
Matthew Baughan, still desperately trying to pay off the engagement ring, scrawls:
My fiancée and I can’t wait for the Donmar Parade in the autumn, but while you’re over here are you planning to throw in some concert dates somewhere? …and the thought… On 7th July we’ll be dancing the foxtrot (if we’ve learnt it in time) to “Grow Old With Me” for our first dance at our wedding in deepest Hampshire – if you’re in the UK that weekend there’s a baby grand you’d be so welcome to play!
JRB, who’s been listening to Brits doing American accents all week in “Parade” auditions, puts on his best RP and declaims:
Why yes, my boy, I am currently in negotiations with several excellent establishments to perform some concerts whilst I am in what I teasingly call “the Uck.” I have to do those concerts because living in London is so unbelievably expensive that I can’t afford to come to Parade rehearsals unless I get a little extra dosh. I’ll let the website know as soon as those concerts are scheduled (pronounced “shed-yooled”). And while I’m chuffed to be invited to your forthcoming nuptials, I must respectfully decline, both because I won’t be in the Uck yet and because if I said yes to you, Ryan Moody would beat me with a hammer. He’s probably still mad at me for that entry anyway.
Brian Perry, pouring salt in old wounds, asks:
My disappointment with not being able to make it out to DC for the Songs concert is bigger than you know. I travel all over to see you live and see your shows and it just didn’t work out. Any luck in securing that financing to record the show?
Quietly, with a single tear descending from his eye, JRB responds:
No.
And finally…
A. John Porcaro asks, while at intermission:
Hey there! I’m currently in the Boston production of Parade and having a great time! I have a question about something that has become a favorite moment among the ensemble: in the section going into the Trial – is there any hidden significance to the references to “Jimmy” and his apparent affinity for windows?
JRB, wracking his brain to remember why he did anything ten years ago, writes:
Congratulations in Boston! I’ve heard great things about that production, and I wish I could get out there, if for no other reason than to support Joe Delgado, an incredible musician and a great pal.
Those of you who haven’t actually performed in Parade will have no idea what A. John is referring to, because it’s buried fairly deep in some very heavy contrapuntal writing. When I was writing those crowd scenes (and there are many of them in Parade), I was very conscious of how Sondheim used the ensemble in “God That’s Good” at the beginning of Act II of Sweeney Todd. If you look through the score of that number, you’ll see that for all the chaos that seems to be happening, there are several stories being very clearly told. It doesn’t really matter if the audience gets all of it, but it certainly helps the actors if they have something specific to play, rather than “Merry Villager Eating Pie Made From Humans.” So whenever I had to write those big crowd scenes, I used that number as a model; at the very least, I always aim to give the actors something they can hang on to. So within the Trial sequence, I knew that two of the actors (eventually I think we had Melanie Vaughan and Randy Redd) would be a mother and a teenage boy, and the teenage boy would be peering in through the courthouse windows from outside. (This really happened. The courtroom was so hot that the windows were open during the trial, and people on the street would lean in and yell at Leo Frank or whoever else was on the stand.) The boy is named “Jimmy” as a special tribute to one of my heroes, legendary billiard genius the “Whirlwind” Jimmy White. I totally made that up, but I hope Jimmy White looks at his webstats and sees a big bump coming from this site and is like, “What the hell?”
That’s that, then. Happy Birthday to me, and to all of you out there who wish you could have a birthday in June. (Which kind of sucks: I was always the youngest person in class, even before I skipped fourth grade.)
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Posted on September 2, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Chris Goss writes:
I am currently at the beginning of my career as a television writer. You spoke at my college several years back, California State University, Fullerton, and I found a tremendous amount of honesty in how you addressed both the performers and the audience.
My question pertains to how success has changed you as an artist. As a young writer my goal is to achieve the seemingly impossible: actually get paid a wage to write something that more than my friends and family will read, watch and ultimately be affected by. That drive often layers directly into my creativity and passion to sit behind my keyboard, or open a blank pad of paper. Do you find that with success, fame and financial stability it becomes more difficult for you to churn out your material? On top of that, do you ever find that you are overwhelmed by what “they” – fans, executives, your own family – want in your attempt to live up to material written during a totally different time in your life? With success comes change. Do you find that to be true in how and what you write?
JRB takes a deep breath and says:
I’m often taken aback at how long I’ve been doing this, and I am amazed that I’ve stuck it out this long. But since I was at least fourteen, I have been single-mindedly devoted to the dream of being a professional writer, and it turns out that that’s exactly what I have become. Everything else I’m about to say pales before that. I have the unbelievable good fortune to do the thing that I’m most passionate about.
Of course I approach my work differently than I did when I was in high school, and there are positives and negatives to that. The most significant difference is that when I was a teenager I made it a goal to write a song every week, and most of the time I did. Even when I first got to New York, I was cranking out material all the time – if I met a singer I liked, I wrote her a song; if someone was doing a concert of young writers and was accepting submissions, I wrote a song; if they weren’t accepting submissions, I wrote a song anyway. Cabarets? Weddings? Auditions? Whatever anyone asked for, I wrote it, and on top of that I wrote songs for my own shows and my own concerts.
Thus far, thirty-four weeks into 2007, I’ve written fourteen songs. Ten of them were written for the second act of Honeymoon In Vegas (three of which were cut almost immediately after I wrote them). If it hadn’t been for that show, I wouldn’t have written much of anything this year. Writing has really become a job for me. It’s still a lot of fun, I don’t mean to suggest that it’s drudgery, but the whole sense of exploring my voice, discovering my art, bursting to life, that’s all gone now.
Which, if you’re a romantic, might sound horrible. But in fact, it’s great. What’s disappeared from my writing in the last four or five years is the empty grandstanding and showing off that informs so much of my earlier work. I’m not embarrassed by my old songs – in fact, I loved playing Songs for a New World at Strathmore earlier this year and rediscovering that material – but I’m very conscious of the effort. You can hear me, in virtually every bar and every lyric, working to let everyone know I was on my game. And now when I listen to young writers, I can hear it in their work: “Listen to me! I’m good! I deserve to be heard!”
Listen to Sondheim’s lyrics in West Side Story; they’re dazzling, but they’re effortful. Contrast that with Sunday in the Park With George, where Sondheim is so effortlessly in command of his craft that you barely even notice that the songs rhyme. I’m obviously not on that level, but if I compare Songs for a New World to The Last Five Years, I can hear the difference immediately. And 13 and Honeymoon In Vegas are even more assured, more comfortable.
The danger is that things get too comfortable, and I forget to challenge myself, or I fall back on certain tricks because I know how well they’ve worked in other songs. I think I’ve gotten to a place where my work has a clearly identifiable voice, but I have to be careful not to let that voice become the only one I know how to use.
It’s also scary knowing that so many artists did their best work when they were much younger than I am now. Paul McCartney was only twenty-five years old when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released; I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the idea of writing such mature and accomplished material at that age, but it’s possible that history will look much more kindly on the Jason Robert Brown who wrote “King of the World” and “Stars and the Moon” than on the writer I’ve become and that I’m, frankly, much prouder of. All of my songwriting heroes had their biggest hits fairly early on in their careers, and it’s complicated to determine whether that represents their best work or not: Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Elton John, Stevie Wonder. Luckily, in the theater, there seems to be more room for a composer to grow, but it’s certainly not guaranteed to happen.
It may be that all that showing off and grandstanding is what makes some art explode off of the wallpaper. Maybe my voice was never clearer than when it was unadulterated by my so-called “professionalism” and “technique.” To be sure, I’d never write “She Cries” now the way I wrote it when I was twenty years old, but whether or not that’s a good thing is a question I find impossible to answer.
My writing has to do a lot of things these days, and chief among them is feeding my family (or, more accurately, paying my mortgage). It’s really weird for me to think that I make enough money from the songs I write to have a nice house in Los Angeles and two cars and a dog and an assistant and a nanny, but it’s true. But when I made that transition from Dreamer to Businessman, there was a trade-off. I used to have Things I Wanted To Say; now I have to balance that with the knowledge of what people are ready to hear. An artist isn’t supposed to admit that, I’m supposed to be entirely removed from commercial considerations, but l’m too old for that shit. I can’t be alone on the mountaintop at this point in my life. My daughter and my wife (and my dog and my assistant) need me, and they need the income that my work provides.
Does that make it harder for me to write? No, in fact, it’s the exact opposite: I don’t spend time chasing rainbows these days, I don’t spend hours in rapt contemplation of some Undefined New Sound, I’ve got shows to write. And while I remain one of the world’s master procrastinators, I love it when the shows start going the way I want them to.
Ultimately, the process is still the same: something in my head is trying to sing, and I have to let it out. All this other stuff is just commentary. At the end of the day, regardless of the pressure and regardless of the past, I get to lay my hands on the keys, open my mouth and my heart, and let it fly.