He said Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Sunday in the Park with George were two of his biggest influences, and had it not been for them, he would have joined a rock band and tried to be Billy Joel.

[5] Brown was subsequently hired to write songs for the Broadway musical Parade, based on the trial and lynching of Leo Frank, after meeting Hal Prince.

Parade, directed by Prince and with a book by Alfred Uhry, won Brown the 1999 Tony Award for Best Original Score.

[7] Brown went back to working with Daisy Prince for his third major show The Last Five Years, for which he wrote the book as well as songs.

[8] The original Chicago cast consisted of Norbert Leo Butz and Lauren Kennedy, with Sherie Rene Scott over the New York run.

Urban Cowboy had been denied the use of the Clint Black catalog, and Brown came in and wrote a few songs (with help from director Lonny Price, who replaced Oesterman after he died).

[14] In December 2005, his Chanukah Suite received its world premiere with two performances by the Los Angeles Master Chorale at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Brown is an active performer of his own work, singing and playing the piano with or without his band, the Caucasian Rhythm Kings (Gary Sieger, guitar, and Randy Landau, bass).

[16] His Bridges of Madison County, a musical adaption of Robert James Waller's 1992 novel with a book by Marsha Norman[17] premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival on August 1, 2013.

[20] In 2010, Brown publicized his personal efforts to discourage the unauthorized online sharing of his copyrighted sheet music via an e-mail conversation with a teenager named Eleanor.

Perhaps most characteristic are his love duets; all five ("I'd Give it All for You" from Songs for a New World, "All the Wasted Time" from Parade, "The Next Ten Minutes" from The Last Five Years, "Tell Her" from 13, and "One Second And A Million Miles" from The Bridges of Madison County) are written in a very distinct format: male-female-both, compound time in the duet section (two using hemiola), and four of the five end with the couple singing the same pitch.

[25] In 2005, Brown was cited by Mark Shenton as one of the leading new theatrical composers (a list that includes Michael John LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, Andrew Lippa, and Jeanine Tesori, among others).

[30] Original cast recordings were made for Songs for a New World, Parade, The Last Five Years, 13, The Bridges of Madison County, and Honeymoon in Vegas.