Composer Jason Robert Brown Is Making "Wingding" Events of His SubCulture Concerts

Jason Robert Brown closed the second concert of his year-long residency at downtown performance venue SubCulture with a new song: "Melinda." It was only the second time the tune had been performed for an audience — and the first was at the top of that night's show.

According to JRB, "Melinda," which is part of an untitled project about New York in the '70s, was written only a day before the performance. What's more, it was just one of two fresh songs that Brown debuted at the one-night concert; the other was "One Summer," a tune from a different as-yet-untitled project based on a beloved film (though Brown dropped some pretty explicit hints — for instance, that it follows a group of women who play in a baseball league "for themselves").

Brown's conspiratorial vibe combined with the thrill of hearing brand-new music made that March 13 evening one to remember, and that's just what the songwriter/occasional performer says he's going for with this SubCulture partnership. Whether Brown is able to stick to the two-debuts-a-month schedule he's set for himself, he wants his SubCulture audience to feel "the thrill of doing something that will only happen once."

But if Brown fails to hit the two-new-song-a-month mark, don't expect to hear a single tune debuted at his next appearance (a duo concert with Tony-winning Next to Normal composer Tom Kitt).

"[Just debuting] one puts a lot of pressure on that one song. That's why two. So if one of them sucks, it just is one," Brown said with a chuckle during a recent conversation with TheaterMania. The residency, he continued, "is a way of having a lot of pressure taken off [the music] while getting a lot of pressure on it at the same time."

With your musical Honeymoon in Vegas having recently wrapped its Broadway run, is it a relief from the pressure of Broadway to have a project like this residency?
It's stressful in a different way because there are two things I'm trying to do with each concert: One is to make them these wonderful, entertaining, thrilling, you've-never-seen-that-before experiences. But the other is to make sure that I'm exploring something musically that I haven't explored before. I wanted a chance to make all kinds of music and make it with different people and just sort of get to play around.
[When you do a week-long engagement], you have to put together a show that you can run for an entire week and sort of you have to know things about how it's gonna go. I wanted to do a show where I just didn't know. I couldn't be sure whether the show was gonna be set on fire every time. The thrill about this residency is just the opportunity to have these concerts be these one-offs that could just be total insane wingding experiences.

The spontaneity is so exciting.
I think that's just part of the deal, that sense of, you know, I wrote this yesterday so let's just do it. If it doesn't work then that's all right, I got other stuff in the show we'll do. And all of the musicians are all capable of just going with me and you know, well, let's take this left turn. Let's do it up a step, or whatever it's gonna be.

How did this residency come to be?
It's really Shoshana Bean's fault because she said, "I'm gonna be in town for a week and I want to do a show with you." And I said, "Oh, well I want to do that." Because any time I can sing with Shoshana, I want to do that. So I said, "Let me try to figure out where we can do it." And so on a lark I called these guys, and they said, "Yeah, let's do it." So I did that, and it was a revelatory experience. It was just a fantastic place to play. The whole environment was totally just a wonderful experience for me and for the audience. So I said, "Gee, I would really love to do more things here." So we came up with the idea of doing the residency where we do a show every month and just sort of see where it goes.

Tell me about the upcoming show with Tom Kitt.
Tom and I have known each other for a very, very long time. The first time we really worked together, he was my sub on Urban Cowboy. When I'd go and watch the show, he was the one who played and sang my part. And then he was also obviously the music director for 13. So we've known each other for a long time and…right when I had started thinking about the residency, Tom and I were having dinner and we both just said, without even knowing what we were saying, "Oh, we have to do one of them together." And then we picked a date and we said, "Great, we'll do that together. Oh how cool that will be." And then we had to figure out what on earth that means. I know that we're going to do some songs of his and a bunch of songs of mine. And I know that we're going to have two pianos onstage. And we've got a lot of other really bizarre plans. We’re just old friends [who] love making music together [and] we thought, What the hell, let's just do it. Who knows what it's going to be?

You're very fun to watch onstage. Is that a place you like to be?
I find I like the spotlight for a very brief period of time…and I sort of need it. But then the minute that it's done, I have to sort of, go hide. So I was never really meant, I think, to be a performer for a living. I was never meant to get in a van and go around and do concerts. But this is a perfect opportunity for me that just once a month I sort of put on a suit and go down to a club and make music with a lot of fun people. This is the best of all worlds for me.