Miranda also wrote the book, music and lyrics for another Broadway musical, Hamilton. The show earned the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and was nominated for a record-setting 16 Tony Awards, of which it won 11, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book. For his performance in the lead role of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda was nominated for another Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. The Hamilton cast recording spent ten weeks atop Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart in 2015, while The Hamilton Mixtape, an album of covers of songs from the musical, developed by and featuring Miranda, reached number one on the Billboard 200 upon release in December 2016.
Early life
Miranda was born in New York City[1] and raised in the neighborhood of Inwood, the son of Luz Towns, a clinical psychologist, and Luis A. Miranda, Jr., a Democratic Party consultant who advised New York City mayor Ed Koch.[4][5][6] Miranda has one older sister, Luz, who is the Chief Financial Officer of the MirRam Group.[7] During childhood and his teens, he spent at least month each year with his grandparents in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico.[8][9] He is of mostly Puerto Rican descent. His mother's ancestors include an interracial couple, Sophie, who was black, and David Towns, who was white; from the early 1800s, this couple spent their married life trying to outrun slavery as laws and governments changed around them. Ensuing branches of the Towns family primarily married Mexican spouses in Texas and Mexico, and Miranda, for his part, has described his ancestry as a quarter Mexican.[10][11][12] The name "Lin-Manuel" was inspired by a poem about the Vietnam War, Nana roja para mi hijo Lin Manuel, by the Puerto Rican writer José Manuel Torres Santiago.[13][14]
As a child, Miranda wrote jingles, including one later used for Eliot Spitzer's 2006 gubernatorial campaign. After attending Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School,[15] Miranda graduated from Wesleyan University in 2002.[9][16] During his time there, he co-founded a hip hop comedy troupe called Freestyle Love Supreme. He wrote the earliest draft of In the Heights in 1999, his sophomore year of college. After the show was accepted by Second Stage, Wesleyan's student theater company, Miranda added "freestyle rap ... and salsa numbers."[9] Second Stage premiered it in 1999. Miranda wrote and directed several other musicals at Wesleyan and acted in many other productions, ranging from musicals to Shakespeare. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Wesleyan University in 2015.[17]
Miranda reprised the role when the national tour of In the Heights played in Los Angeles from June 23 to July 25, 2010.[20][21] He again joined the tour in San Juan, Puerto Rico.[22] Miranda rejoined the Broadway cast as Usnavi from December 25, 2010 until the production closed on January 9, 2011, after 29 previews and 1,185 regular performances.[23]
File:Lin Manuel Miranda White House Poetry Jam 2009.webmMiranda performs "The Hamilton Mixtape" at the White House in 2009
During these years, Miranda also worked as an English teacher at his former high school, wrote for the Manhattan Times as a columnist and restaurant reviewer, and composed music for commercials.[30]
2011–14: Bring It On and television work
Miranda co-wrote the music and lyrics for Bring It On: The Musical with Tom Kitt and Amanda Green. Bring It On premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia in January 2011.[31][32] The musical began a US national tour on October 30, 2011 in Los Angeles, California.[33][34] It then played a limited engagement on Broadway at the St. James Theatre, beginning previews on July 12, and officially opening on August 1, 2012. It closed on December 30, 2012. It was nominated for Tony Awards in the categories of Best Musical and Best Choreography.[35]
In 2008, while on vacation, Miranda read Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton and, inspired by the book, wrote a rap about Hamilton that he performed for the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word, on May 12, 2009, accompanied by Alex Lacamoire. Miranda later said he spent a year writing the Hamilton song "My Shot", revising it countless times for every verse to reflect Alexander Hamilton's intellect.[45][46] By 2012, Miranda was performing an extended set of pieces, based on the life of Hamilton, referred to as the Hamilton Mixtape; the New York Times called it "an obvious game changer".[47]
Hamilton, a musical based on the Hamilton Mixtape, premiered off-Broadway at The Public Theater in January 2015, directed by Thomas Kail. Miranda wrote the book and score and starred as the title character.[48][49] The show received highly positive reviews,[50] and its engagement was sold out.[51] Chernow and Miranda received the 2015 History Makers Award from the New York Historical Society for their work in creating the musical.[52] The show began previews on Broadway in July 2015 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre and officially opened on August 6, 2015,[53] earning rave reviews.[54] On the first night of Hamilton previews over 700 people lined up for lottery tickets.[55]
Meanwhile, Miranda contributed music for the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), writing a song for the scene in Maz Kanata's Cantina, an homage to the classic Mos Eisley Cantina scene and song.[citation needed] On January 24, 2016, Miranda performed the offstage cameo role of Loud Hailer in the Broadway production of Les Misérables,[56] fulfilling his childhood dream of being in the show, as it was the first production he ever saw on Broadway.[57] On March 15, 2016, members of the cast of Hamilton performed at the White House and hosted workshops; Miranda performed freestyle rap from prompts held up by President Obama.[58] In April 2016, Miranda and Jeremy McCarter published Hamilton: The Revolution, a book describing Hamilton's journey from conception to Broadway success and discussing the cultural revolution that permeates the show.[59]
On April 24, 2016, on the TV show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, at the end of a segment about the debt crisis in Puerto Rico, Miranda performed an emotional rap about allowing the island to restructure its debt.[60] In May 2016, Miranda received an honorary Doctorate of the Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and gave the commencement speech.[61] The same month, for his work in the role of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda received the Drama League Distinguished Performance Award.[citation needed] Miranda gave his last performance in Hamilton on July 9, 2016.[62] He vowed to return to the show.[63] A documentary about the creation of the show, Hamilton's America, featuring Miranda, premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 1, 2016 and first aired on PBS' Great Performances series on October 21, 2016.[64][65]
2016–present: Disney collaborations and film work
From 2014 to 2016, Miranda collaborated with Opetaia Foa'i and Mark Mancina to write the music for Moana.[66] He later explained that because he was so busy with those two projects, he turned down other projects "that would have distracted" him, but this served as an "ego check" as Hamilton became a hit.[39] Miranda sings the song "We Know the Way" in the film. He also recorded a duet with Jordan Fisher of the song "You're Welcome", which is played over the film's end credits.[67]Moana opened to positive reviews in November 2016 and was a box office hit. Miranda's songwriting work was praised by critics,[citation needed] and he received Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, and Academy Award nominations for the song "How Far I'll Go".[citation needed]
Miranda hosted Saturday Night Live on October 8, 2016; in July 2017, he received an Emmy nomination for his appearance.[68] He is set to star in the Mary Poppins sequel Mary Poppins Returns, directed by Rob Marshall.[69] He has been confirmed as executive producer and composer on Lionsgate's film adaptation of The Kingkiller Chronicle, along with a tie-in television series.[70][71] Miranda is producing eleven songs set to be used in the upcoming Sony Pictures Animation film, Vivo, which is being directed by Kirk DeMicco.[72] He is expected to voice Fenton Crackshell/Gizmoduck in the 2017 reboot of DuckTales.[73] He is also negotiating with Disney concerning a live-action film remake of The Little Mermaid, for which he may co-write additional songs (with Alan Menken).[74] However, in February 2017, Miranda told The New York Times that "We haven't formalized anything."[39] As of July 2017, it has been confirmed he is working with Alan Menken.[75]
Personal life
Miranda married Vanessa Adriana Nadal, a high school friend, in 2010.[76] At the wedding reception, Miranda, along with the wedding party, performed the Fiddler on the Roof song "To Life";[77] the video has been viewed more than five million times on YouTube.[78] Nadal is a lawyer at the global law firm Jones Day.[79] Miranda and Nadal's son Sebastian was born in 2014. According to a 2015 interview on the podcast Can I Pet Your Dog?, Miranda has a dog named Tobi.[80][81] Miranda discovered that he is related to Residente and ILE of Calle 13 during a 2009 concert by the group in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where Miranda was invited to perform. Backstage, the mother of Residente and ILE revealed their connection to Gilberto Concepción de Gracia, founder of the Puerto Rican Independence Party.[82] Miranda and Residente have since confirmed the relationship.[83] In 2017, Miranda performed on the opening track of Residente's self-titled debut album.[84]
Miranda received an honorary degree from Yeshiva University, in Washington Heights, Manhattan, in 2009. He is the youngest person to receive an honorary degree from that university.[86] Former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, presented Miranda with the degree.[citation needed] In 2015, Miranda received a MacArthur "Genius" Award.[87] In May of that year, he also received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Wesleyan.[88] The following year, after a meeting with President Barack Obama,[89] Miranda joined US Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Charles Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic lawmakers to call for congressional action to back a Senate bill in Washington that would allow Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy and significantly ease its $70 billion debt burden.[90]
Miranda, a fan of My Brother, My Brother and Me on the Maximum Fun podcast network, has appeared on the podcast as a "guestpert"[91] and referenced the podcast in the Hamilton score.[92] Miranda wrote new lyrics to the song "Fugue for Tinhorns", from the musical Guys and Dolls, called "Fugue for Brotherhorns", for the podcast's hosts to perform.[91] Miranda has also referred to the podcast in his public appearances at the Grammy Awards[93] and on Saturday Night Live.[94] He is also a fan of the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast on the Earwolf podcast network, on which he has appeared by telephone,[95] and of the TV drama The West Wing, rapping a tribute to the show in 2017.[96]
^Mead, Rebecca (2015-02-09). "All About the Hamiltons". The New Yorker. ISSN0028-792X. Archived from the original on September 30, 2017. Retrieved 2016-12-25. The composer of 'In the Heights' grew up not in Washington Heights but thirty blocks farther uptown, across from Inwood Hill Park...((cite news)): Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
