Jonathan Larson - Career

Career

Before composing and writing the musical "Rent", his most popular and well-known work, Jonathan Larson wrote a variety of early theatrical pieces, with varying degrees of success and production.

Among his early creative works is Sacrimmoralinority, his first musical which was co-written with David Glenn Armstrong, and originally staged at his alma mater Adelphi University in the winter of 1981. Following Jonathan and David's graduation in 1982, and retitled Saved! - An Immoral Musical on the Moral Majority, the Brechtian-themed musical cabaret played a four-week showcase run at Rusty's Storefront Blitz, a small theatre on 42nd Street in Manhattan, and won both authors a writing award from ASCAP.

Between 1983 and 1990, Larson wrote Superbia, originally intended as a futuristic rock retelling of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, though the Orwell estate denied him permission to adapt the novel itself. Superbia won the Richard Rodgers Production Award and the Richard Rodgers Development Grant. However, despite performances at Playwrights Horizons and a rock concert version produced by Larson's close friend and producer Victoria Leacock at the Village Gate in September 1989, Superbia was not fully produced, leading to disappointment for Larson.

His next work, completed in 1991, was a "rock monologue" entitled 30/90, which was later renamed "Boho Days" and finally titled tick, tick... BOOM!. This piece, written for only Larson with a piano and rock band, was intended to be a response to his feelings of rejection caused by the disappointment of Superbia. The show was performed off-Broadway at the Village Gate in Greenwich Village, as well as at the Second Stage Theater, then on the Upper West Side. Both of these productions were produced by Larson's friend, Victoria Leacock. The producer Jeffrey Seller saw a reading of Boho Days and expressed interest in producing Larson's musicals.

While in college, Larson came into contact with his strongest musical theatre influence, Stephen Sondheim, to whom he occasionally submitted his work for review. One tick, tick... BOOM! song called "Sunday" is a homage to Sondheim, who supported Larson, staying close to the melody and lyrics of Sondheim's own song of the same title but turning it from a manifesto about art into a waiter's lament. Sondheim would often write letters of recommendation for Larson to various producers. Larson later won the Stephen Sondheim Award.

In addition to his three larger theatrical pieces written before Rent, Larson also wrote music for J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation, numerous individual numbers, music for Sesame Street, music for the children's book cassettes of An American Tail and Land Before Time, music for Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner, and performed in John Gray's musical Billy Bishop Goes to War which starred his close friend actor Roger Bart (Desperate Housewives), a musical called Mowgli, and four songs for the children's video Away We Go! (which he also conceived with collaborator and Composer Bob Golden and directed). For his early works Larson won a grant and award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and the Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Theatre Foundation's Commendation Award.