Electronic Press Kit — 2026

Jason Hackner
Songwriter & Theatre Director

Jason Hackner creates theatre-rooted pop and funk songs built for immersive, audience-choice performance — where Charlotte's stages meet thirty years of accumulated craft.

JH Charlotte, NC

Artist Biography

In His Own Words

Jason Hackner is a Charlotte-based songwriter, producer, and immersive theatre director who builds pop and funk songs designed to be performed — not just played. His music carries the emotional precision of theatrical storytelling and the groove of classic soul. Best experienced live, where the audience doesn't just watch — they choose.

Jason Hackner is a Charlotte-based songwriter, producer, vocal studio owner, and immersive theatre director whose music lives at the intersection of pop, funk, and the stage. Shaped by thirty years inside the mechanics of live performance, his songs are built to carry weight — emotionally and dramatically. He is the creator of ARRANGEMENTS, an original interactive musical in which audiences shape the story in real time. His catalog of original tracks, now available across major streaming platforms, marks the formal public arrival of an artist who has spent a career building toward exactly this — and finally decided it was time.

Jason Hackner does not write songs about feelings. He writes songs that create them — and then builds the room around them.

Based in Charlotte, NC, Jason Hackner is a songwriter, producer, vocal studio owner, and immersive theatre director whose work refuses easy categorization. His music is theatrical without being precious, funky without being retro, and emotionally direct without being obvious. It is the sound of someone who has spent thirty years inside the mechanics of how a story moves a room — and has learned to encode that into a three-minute track.

His roots run deep in Charlotte's performing arts community, where he has worked as a vocal pedagogue, a director, and a builder of live experiences. That background is audible in everything he writes: melodies that demand to be sung, lyrics that earn their emotional payoffs, and arrangements that know exactly when to strip back and when to explode. His touchstones are artists who understood that pop could be devastating, that funk could be tender, and that the voice is the most honest instrument in any room. He brings to that tradition the structural rigor of musical theatre — the discipline that demands every lyric do double duty: move the character forward and make the audience feel it simultaneously.

His most ambitious project is Arrangements, an original interactive musical he created, composed, and directs. The show places narrative decision-making in the hands of the audience, transforming each performance into a different dramatic experience. The songs from Arrangements are built to survive that instability — sturdy enough to hold meaning no matter which story the audience chooses to tell. It opens August 13, 2026 at Free Range Brewing in Charlotte's NoDa neighborhood.

His original catalog, now available on Spotify, Amazon Music, and beyond, is the first formal introduction of Jason Hackner to the wider music world — not a debut so much as a door finally opened on work that has been accumulating for years.

He is not building a discography.

He is building a universe.

And these songs are the score.

Press tagline Jason Hackner creates theatre-rooted pop and funk songs built for immersive, audience-choice performance — where Charlotte's stages meet thirty years of accumulated craft.

Social bio Songwriter. Producer. Immersive theatre director. Pop/funk built for the stage. Creator of Arrangements. Charlotte, NC.

Booking pitch Jason Hackner is a Charlotte-based songwriter, producer, and immersive theatre director who creates pop/funk and soul-influenced originals designed for live performance — including Arrangements, an audience-choice interactive musical available for venue and festival programming.

Music Catalog

Seven Original Tracks

Where Is Ray?
Jazz quintet, agitated patter, and a company unraveling in real time. Lena's backstory involves a broken diffuser and barrettes in the freezer. By the bridge it's a full gossip fugue — stolen songs, stolen money, stolen heart — and then the chorus just becomes one question, stacked thirty times until the chord doesn't resolve. Pure Sondheim DNA with a live-club pulse.
Theatrical · Folk-Pop
The Life to Come
Eighteen years of marriage, a daughter grown, a life about to begin again — and one person in the room who isn't saying something. D major, warm and open, until the lyric 'It's more than Sasha, you have something to tell.' The optimism is real. So is what's underneath it.
Anthemic Pop
Never Ask What Could've Been
Eb minor, a 'I'm so thankful' countermelody running under lyrics about being tied up and left black and blue, and a coda of 'treasure map, yo' repeated until it becomes a ritual. Whatever this song is about, it isn't regret. It's obsession wearing regret's clothes.
Soul Ballad
Lesson In Love
Two characters, one blood moon, and a chorus that keeps warning you it knows exactly what it's doing. Person One is lonely. Person Two stopped looking at their partner like a work of art. The devil is genuinely in the details.
Soul · Funk
AfterHours (JJ's Bewitchy Mix)
The AfterHours theme run through a Bewitched filter — nose-twitch energy, a little suburban witchcraft, the original melody transformed into something that shouldn't work but absolutely does.
Electronic · House
After Hours (Duet)
Lena's version. Modeling at eleven, runway at fourteen, closing the bar alone on Saturdays with whatever was left in the well. The outro lands on 'we were everything / we were here / and we didn't know what everything was fine' — which is one of the saddest lines in the catalog.
Vocal Duo · Intimate
AfterHours (Radio Edit)
Pure 90s rave flashback. Hands up, eyes closed, somewhere between a warehouse and a memory you can’t fully place. The AfterHours theme at its most unguarded.
Pop · Radio

For Media & Bloggers

Newsworthy Story Angles

The Interactive Musical
Arrangements is an original audience-choice musical opening August 13, 2026 at Free Range Brewing in Charlotte's NoDa — a format rarely seen outside major markets.
Songwriter-Director-Vocal Coach
A working triple threat building an entire performance world — rare at the independent level without institutional backing.
AI-Assisted Theatre Music
Among the first independent theatrical songwriters in the Southeast using AI-assisted music production to realize a full original musical.
George Michael Lineage
Pop/funk that draws a deliberate creative line from George Michael's era to contemporary interactive theatre — a rare intersection.
Charlotte Arts Scene
An independent Charlotte producer building a new kind of performance work — outside the usual Broadway pipeline or regional theatre system.
Theatre Meets Streaming
Releasing theatrical songs as standalone streaming tracks — testing whether narrative, character-driven music can find a mainstream audience.

Fact Sheet

Quick Reference

Artist NameJason Hackner (Jason Hackner)
Based InCharlotte, North Carolina
RolesSongwriter, Producer, Immersive Theatre Director, Vocal Studio Owner
GenreTheatre-rooted Pop / Funk / Soul
InfluencesGeorge Michael, Musical Theatre songwriting tradition
Current ProjectArrangements — original audience-choice interactive musical
Catalog7 original tracks (2017–2026)
DistributionLANDR / DistroKid — Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal
CompanyJason Plus Productions
Press Contactjaydhac@gmail.com

Get in Touch

Press & Booking

Press inquiries jaydhac@gmail.com
Company Jason Plus Productions — Charlotte, NC
Response time Within 48 hours