Jonathan Brennan is a poet, lyricist, playwright, singer and percussionist, playing conga, bongo, guiro, maracas and various other Latin percussion instruments on Puerto Rican and Cuban traditional music.  His songs have been performed in musicals and recorded on cds and demos.

His recorded lyrics, with composer Mel Nelson, include “Ain’t No Shame,” by
Joan Bow-Miller on her latest jazz cd, Variations.   listen

Brennan has written lyrics for dozens of songs, including "One Step Out of Time"
listen (composer Mel Nelson; singer Julia Sultanova), and "Texas Rain"  listen
(composer Mel Nelson; singer Julia Sultanova).  Note: These are demos and not final session recordings.

His musical plays include Pudd’nhead Wilson, adapted from the novel by Mark Twain, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, adapted from the story by Washington Irving.  Pudd’nhead Wilson reached the final round of the National Music Theatre Competition, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow received a staged reading at the off-Broadway Century Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Musical Mondays Workshop Series. His latest musical play, Passing Through Fire and Water is based on the life of the “African American Anne Frank,” Harriet Jacobs, who escaped from slavery in North Carolina in 1835 by hiding in her grandmother’s cramped attic room for nearly seven years, watching her children grow up through a small hole she carved in the attic wall. Passing Through Fire and Water, a one-woman show, was performed as a staged reading at Mission College in February, 2002. Brennan was trained in method acting and script analysis at the Jean Shelton Actor's Studio in San Francisco.

Brennan’s fiction reviews and poetry have appeared in numerous publications.   He has served as editor of the Berkeley Poetry Review, assistant editor at the San Francisco Review of Books, a Performing/Fine Arts Competition Coordinator, organizer of the Mission College Poetry Slam, and has team-taught courses with faculty in the Music Department.  His poetry was awarded the University of California, Berkeley Dorothy Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Lyric Poetry.