| Songs for a New World | |
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World Premiere Recording |
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| Music | Jason Robert Brown |
| Lyrics | Jason Robert Brown |
| Book | Jason Robert Brown |
| Productions | 1995 Off-Broadway |
Songs for a New World is a work of musical theater written and composed by Jason Robert Brown. Its original off-Broadway production ran for 28 performances at the WPA Theater in New York City in 1995. The show sits on the boundary between musical and song cycle, but it is neither; it is an abstract musical, a series of songs all connected by theme rather than narrative. The show employs four performers who do not literally play the same characters throughout the show but who do have consistently developing character arcs nonetheless. Composer Jason Robert Brown has said of his show, "It's about one moment. It's about hitting the wall and having to make a choice, or take a stand, or turn around and go back."[1]
The original cast consisted of Brooks Ashmanskas, Andrea Burns, Jessica Molaskey, and Billy Porter (Porter's part was sung by Ty Taylor on the original cast recording). Daisy Prince, daughter of Broadway director Harold Prince, directed. The original band consisted of Jason Robert Brown on piano, Randy Landau on bass, Tom Partington on drums, Joe Reina on keyboards, and Warren Smith & Rob McEwan on percussion. Songs for a New World was Jason Robert Brown's first produced show.
The piano features heavily throughout the show's music and because of its small cast and orchestra, Songs for a New World has become a favorite small show for colleges and local theatres, despite its vocally demanding score. The music of Songs for a New World is heavily influenced by a broad range of musical genres, including pop, gospel, jazz and classical music. Many of the songs combine elements of two or more of these genres. An extensive background and analysis essay about the stage show is online at http://www.newlinetheatre.com/newworldchapter.html [2]
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A workshop of the show was produced in Toronto, and then it was brought to the WPA Theatre in New York, where it played a limited run of twenty-eight performances. The score was recorded in 1996 by RCA and released commercially to great acclaim, which spurred many regional productions of the show across America. In 1998, on the heels of some limited success for Songs for a New World, Brown was given his first major assignment — writing the score for the new musical Parade, which was to open at Lincoln Center in the fall of 1998, with a book by Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy) and direction by Harold Prince.
Songs for a New World's first professional revival in New York was staged off-Broadway on October 10, 2008 at the ATA Chernuchin Theatre, featuring a 14-member youth ensemble in addition to the four principal performers; it was directed by Debbie Slevin.
The show continues to be popular amongst amateur theatre groups with performances across Australia, the USA and the UK.
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