Former Glen Cover To Perform At Jones Beach Theater

***Published in the Glen Cove Record Pilot***

Glen Cove High School alum and multi-instrumentalist Jason Crosby, the son of Glen Cove’s Poet Laureate Victoria Crosby, will be performing with Jackson Browne’s band on Aug. 27. The Jackson Browne and James Taylor tour was postponed from last summer due to the pandemic.

“It got pushed a number of times throughout the pandemic, so to see it finally come to fruition was thrilling,” Crosby said. “It’s good to be back.”

Crosby is a multi-instrumentalist with perfect pitch who played piano and violin as a very young child, trumpet and French horn in High School, viola with the Long Island Youth Orchestra and is self-taught on guitar and ukulele, among other instruments.

For touring musicians like Crosby, the pandemic did present some challenging times.

“But I was able to work pretty steadily through the pandemic, just in a different way,” Crosby said. “I did a lot of recording sessions and virtual streams and did the best I could to stay active.”

Traveling from his current home in Sonoma, CA, Crosby has performed in cities like Chicago and Roanoke, VA, in his tour with Taylor and Browne, who he met while touring with Jenny Lewis several years ago.

“It’s a great group of people and group of musicians,” Crosby said.

He said he is looking forward to performing at the Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater that overlooks the shores that he used to go to as a kid. But this is not the first time Crosby has performed at Jones Beach, as he’s appeared there with Robert Randolph and the Family Band and the Susan Tedeschi Band. He also opened for The Allman Brothers, John Mellencamp and B.B. King, also touring with The Blind Boys of Alabama. Since moving to California, he has played with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, former band members of The Grateful Dead, and Moonalice.

When asked how his home city of Glen Cove formed him as a musician, he brought up Robert M. Finley Middle School and Glen Cove High School’s music programs and music teachers like the late Dale Alan Zurbrick. Other famous musicians who have also come out of the Glen Cove City School District music program include music producers Matthew and James G. Morales and Ashanti. He said the music program in Glen Cove schools brought “joy to the classroom.”

His mother, Victoria Crosby, said she’s seen Crosby play all over the United States, Ireland and Northern Island.

“I’m very proud of his accomplishments,” Victoria Crosby said. “I’m a ‘groupie mom.’”