“I’ve been trying to figure out what makes me me. I understand the raw materials, at least as much as anyone who got a C+ in Biology, but then what do you have to put in the mixing bowl to end up writing like I write, playing like I play, being interested in the corners of the world that most excite me?
If you’re a Jewish kid growing up in the suburbs of New York City in the 70s, there’s a bunch that’s baked in, because the minute you’re born, you’re already deeply enmeshed in a cultural language. You’re swimming in Streisand and Hamlisch and Manilow, soaking up Woody Allen and Nichols & May and Mel Brooks, inundated with Bernstein. Did I mention that when my dad was a little boy, his upstairs neighbor was Carole King? That I’m a distant cousin to Yip Harburg? Even if I’d never written a note, the rhythms and timbres of those Jews are stitched into my DNA.
And then here comes Billy Joel, and there it is – the ferocious piano playing, the sneer that hides the schmaltz, the yearning crooning. Oh, wait, it’s Paul Simon, with those gorgeous, spiritual harmonies, the language that’s informed by a thousand different dialects but is still distinctly original.
Am I me yet? Look at me in high school, I got obsessed with Hitchcock movies, I’d stay up until 4 am if Channel 11 decided to broadcast Saboteur or Foreign Correspondent. And I also fell in love with Gilbert & Sullivan! (How is that even possible? I’m still filled with affection for those operettas, and I have no idea why.) My first real paying job was playing the piano at the Elmwood Playhouse in Nyack for a Cole Porter revue, so I was dreaming those ballads and beguines, those dexterous, constantly surprising lyrics lodging themselves in my brain.
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross! The Beatles! Dave Brubeck! The Modern Jazz Quartet! I can hear it all spilling over the edges of everything I write. How does anyone become a musician without their parents’ record collection?
And three indispensable voices: Joni Mitchell, who rang these extraordinary changes of vulnerability and confidence, so personal and virtuosic but also so elemental. Steve Reich, creating an entire musical world from tiny cells, layering, shifting, simple to understand but impossibly complex. And, of course, Sondheim, rigorous and bold, telling stories no one else had the courage to tell, using that incredible precision to unlock almost unbearably deep emotion.
That’s what was in me at 20 years old, that and a constant nagging sense of unbelonging, a torrent of overripe romantic drama, a relentless need to prove that I was special because the alternative was unacceptable. I arrived in New York City in 1990, determined to tell stories with music, to say something honest and brave but in some new way, some way that even all of my heroes hadn’t done yet. And in the 34 years since then, I keep stretching to do it – as I built a career, as I met my closest confidantes and most valued collaborators, as I found my perfect life partner and built a family and a home.
Every time I do a concert, I think of it as putting together some part of the puzzle, maybe it’s the edge or the corner or some elusive spot right in the heart that I’ve never been able to finish. Tonight, with these magical friends and artists, I get the privilege of rooting around through all these melodies, all these words, all these stories, and sharing with you something new that even I have never seen until right now.”
An Evening with Jason Robert Brown at Lyrics & Lyricists – one night only, Thursday, May 9, at 7:30 pm. Details and tickets here.