The following is a guest post by Mark Eden Horowitz, Senior Music Specialist.
In the Library’s Music Division, we acquire, preserve, exhibit, and serve to Congress, the American people, and researchers world-class special collections on all manner of the performing arts. There are few more gratifying experiences than when collections we have worked on (and loved) are used by researchers. Period. But most gratifying of all is when that research results in, not just an article, dissertation, or book, but actual performances—performances where hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of audience members will hear and see things they otherwise would never have been exposed to.
It has happened a few times recently, particularly with the 2023 film “Maestro,” which was researched in the Performing Arts Reading Room and where our Leonard Bernstein Collection items informed so many aspects. Another example is the film adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s “tick, tick…BOOM!” (2021) whose writing and production were similarly informed by our Larson Collection.
Well, it is about to happen again using our Jonathan Larson Collection as source material. “The Jonathan Larson Project” is a new musical featuring songs written by Jonathan Larson that have never previously been performed as part of a show, featuring songs cut from “Rent” and “tick, tick…BOOM!,” and songs from unproduced shows, including “1984” and “Superbia.” This new show opened in March at the Orpheum Theater in Manhattan, and we think it is fair to say this show would not be happening were it not for the materials found in the Library’s Jonathan Larson Collection. We are grateful for the foresight and generosity of the Larson family.
The show, conceived by Jennifer Ashley Tepper, who herself undertook all the research at the Library, described her discoveries as “endlessly surprising.” She goes on to describe Jonathan’s lost songs as: “political, personal, surprising, galvanizing, relevant, and [they] tell a fascinating new story about a young man following his heart in New York City, trying to change the world.” Who wouldn’t want to experience that?
The show includes around twenty songs, most of which were discovered on cassettes Jonathan Larson made singing and accompanying himself. Two examples: there’s “SOS,” a song desperately seeking faith.
“SOS,” by the way, was written for Larson’s hoped-for musical version of “1984” which, when he failed to get the rights and get produced in 1984, evolved into his original musical “Superbia” (and whose reading became a topic in “tick, tick…BOOM!”). “Iron Mike” is a contemporary folk song, explicating and decrying the spill from an oil tanker.
For those of you who can’t make it to New York to experience the show, there is a precursor album also titled “The Jonathan Larson Project.” Which reminds me, many years ago the Library underwrote the Songwriter series of recordings of songwriters performing their own songs. One of those was “Jonathan Sings Larson,” which not only is a CD of Larson singing his own songs, but includes a DVD with parts of live performances. As I said at the top, my colleagues and I love it when we can help as many people as possible to experience and enjoy the actual works we collect and save and treasure.