“I woke up the morning after the election and I thought, 'Oh God. I have a job to do. I have to find something that feels like hope,’” says Jason Robert Brown of what inspired the opening song on his latest album, How We React and How We Recover, released by Ghostlight Records June 29.

In the video above, produced by Ghostlight, Brown takes audiences “Inside the Album.” Listen to the full track here.

The behind-the-scenes look shows clips of Brown performing “Hope” during his ongoing artistic residency at downtown’s Subculture, where he first debuted the song. “We have to find hope in the wreckage of what hope used to be,” says Brown. “If I'm given the opportunity to speak to a group of people, I think there is value in saying the things that I genuinely believe are important. The point of having a voice is to speak up.”

Of the 12 songs featured on the album, nine were composed during Brown’s ongoing residency at downtown’s Subculture. Additional tracks include “Fifty Years Long,” commissioned by a couple Brown didn’t know to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary; the brassy anthem “Invisible,” inspired by a young girl who was ill and living at the Ronald McDonald house who wanted to be seen as powerful in spite of her condition; and “Melinda,” a samba digging into the grit of 1970s New York City.

Visit GhostlightRecords.com to purchase.