Jason Graae

Broadway and off-Broadway credits include A Grand Night for Singing, Falsettos, Stardust, Snoopy!, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?, Forever Plaid, Olympus on My Mind, All in the Timing and Hello, Muddah, Hello, Fadduh.

Jason Graae originated the role of Houdini in the L.A. production of Ragtime at the Shubert Theatre.

He has appeared on dozens of television shows, including Six Feet Under, Rude Awakening, Friends, and Frasier.

On PBS, he was a guest soloist with Marvin Hamlisch and the National Symphony Orchestra on Holiday for the Troops at the Kennedy Center, twice with the Boston Pops, and recently in Words and Music by Jerry Herman.

Jason has been heard on many cartoons and for five years he was the voice of Lucky, the Leprechaun for Lucky Charms Cereal.

Graae made his Los Angeles Opera debut as Njegus in The Merry Widow and has appeared with Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, New Orleans Opera, Washington National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera.

His one-man show, Coup de Graae!, won the New York Nightlife Award and was listed in TimeOut NY's Top 10 Cabaret shows of the year. In 2009, he created a terrific solo concert “Magically Delicious”, which has played N.Y., L.A. and many cities in between. He won his fourth Bistro Award for his last show Graae's Anatomy.

Graae has recorded more than 40 CDs, including original cast albums, concerts, compilations, and his two solo efforts.

MUSIC REVIEW | JASON GRAAE: A Lucky Fellow Who Savors the Absurd
By STEPHEN HOLDEN, New York Times, Published: September 28, 2009

A vaudevillian spark plug flashing mischief, Jason Graae did a bit of everything in his show, “Magically Delicious,” at the Metropolitan Room on Saturday. He is a resilient singing clown who has bounced from theater to nightclubs to television to commercials and back, compiling a résumé that serves as a storehouse of zany, lightweight shtick.

An entertainer who for five years gave voice to Lucky the Leprechaun for Lucky Charms cereal, Mr. Graae has a keen sense of the absurd that a less ebullient performer might milk for bittersweet pathos. But Mr. Graae, accompanied here by the pianist Alex Rybeck, plays it happy-go-lucky, portraying his struggle as one big silly adventure.

Most of the numbers in his show deal with magic, however obliquely. Parodying the role of Harry Houdini, which he originated in the West Coast production of “Ragtime,” he arrived onstage in handcuffs, which he tried futilely to shake off in the Houdini manner. There was a “Bewitched Medley,” in which he played the oboe deliberately off-key. Later in the show he twirled the instrument like a baton.

A delightful nugget of Broadway esoterica was his resurrection of “Home Sweet Heaven” (from the 1964 musical “High Spirits”), in which unlikely combinations of historical figures were described cavorting in the great beyond. (Casanova puts the moves on Gertrude Stein, for instance.)

Mr. Graae has a sweet and sincere side. For his rendition of “Lucky to Be Me,” celebrating his happy 10-year relationship, he shed his comic mask and located the song’s poignant heart. Saving the wittiest bit for last, he impersonated a masked horror-movie villain in “Slasher Medley.” It was a surefire piece of special material that stitched together revised quotes from Broadway standards: “Gray skies are going to clear up/ Carve up a happy face”; “If ever I would cleave you, I’d start around the elbow.” My favorite: “When you walk through a storm, hold a head up high.”