Bio
Jason DeBord is an Associate Professor of Music in the Department of Musical Theatre at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He teaches in the BFA Musical Theatre program and co-designed the school’s minor in Musical Theatre Composition. He writes the arrangements for, and music directs, the annual Musical Theatre Senior Showcase in New York City as well as the showcase video portfolios. For four years he was music director of the musical theatre studio at Italy’s Trentino Music Festival. He is now developing a community-oriented musical theatre education program with Hawai‘i Children’s Theatre on the island of Kaua‘i.
He conceived and arranged Extraction to Extinction, a seven-movement dramatic cantata now in development. Its music and lyrics are by Emmy Award winner Nick Spear, libretto is by Spear and DeBord, and orchestrations are by Olivier Award winner and Tony nominee August Eriksmoen. Supported by a University of Michigan RCI grant, the work traces America’s long entanglement with resource extraction, from the 1917 Granite Mountain–Speculator mine fire in Butte, Montana, to the copper, cobalt, and lithium that sustain our digital present. It is scored for six actor-vocalists as a modern concerto grosso, with an electric band set before a full orchestra.
Jason served as Resident Music Supervisor for the Tony Award-winning Broadway company and world tour of Once – The Musical. In 2025 he returned to Seoul to music supervise a new mounting of the show, in a fresh Korean translation, at the Coex Artium. His Broadway credits as conductor and keyboardist also include Shrek, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Rock of Ages, Legally Blonde, Lestat, All Shook Up, and Rent.
In New York, his Off-Broadway and concert credits include Bare, Fat Camp, Bat Boy: The Musical, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, City Center Encores!, and numerous developmental workshops of new works. His national tours include A Chorus Line, Rent, and Urinetown. His regional work includes the Alliance Theatre, the Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, and A.C.T. in San Francisco. He created new dance, vocal, and song arrangements for the revised Paint Your Wagon by Lerner and Loewe, produced at the 5th Avenue Theatre, the Ordway, and The Muny in St. Louis. His playing is featured prominently in Every Little Step, the 2009 documentary from Sony Pictures Classics. He has also held academic residencies with the University of Colorado Department of Theatre and the Yale Institute for Music Theatre.
