Jason Robert Brown’s “Songs for a New World” debuted in 1995 as an off-Broadway musical. To create the song cycle directed by Daisy Prince, daughter of theatrical legend Harold Prince, Brown cobbled together unrelated pieces he had written earlier. So many hearts were touched by its message that it has since been produced several hundred times around the world.

Now it debuts in Washington as a Signature Theatre production with Brown at the piano backed by his five-man ensemble, the Caucasian Rhythm Kings, direct from a week-long gig at New York’s Birdland. Tituss Burgess, Alice Ripley, Laura Griffith and Brian d’Arcy James are the handpicked cast of four.