Composer of the Month: May

  

Lin Manuel Miranda

1980-present

Period of Music: Musical Theater, Movies, Television

Country: USA (New York)

Popular Works: Hamilton, In the Heights, Bring it On the Musical, Encanto, Moana, Mary Poppins Returns, live action remake of The Little Mermaid

Interesting Facts:

-American actor, singer-songwriter, playwright, and filmmaker.

-He is known for creating the Broadway musicals In the Heights (2005) and Hamilton (2015) and the soundtrack of Disney's Encanto (2021). 

-His accolades include three Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, two Laurence Olivier Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, an Annie Award, a MacArthur Fellowship Award, a Kennedy Center honor, and a Pulitzer Prize. 

-A graduate of Wesleyan University, Miranda made his Broadway debut in the 2008 musical In the Heights, in which he starred and wrote the music and lyrics. The production was a critical and commercial success, winning the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Original Score, and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. The stage musical was adapted into a film released in June 2021.

-Miranda gained wider recognition for writing the script, music, and lyrics for Hamilton, which has been acclaimed as a pop culture phenomenon since its 2015 Broadway premiere. It earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards and won 11, including Miranda's first win for the Best Book of a Musical. The Hamilton cast recording spent ten weeks atop Billboard's Top Rap albums chart and became the 11th biggest album of the 2010s. 

-A frequent collaborator of the Walt Disney Company, Miranda has written original songs for the studio, which has garnered him two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (How Far I'll Go and Dos Oruguitas). He worked on the 2016 animated musical Moana, and wrote the story and music for Encanto - a widespread critical and commercial success; its song We Don't Talk About Bruno broke various records, marked Miranda's first ever number one song on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK singles charts, and cemented his mainstream fame. 

-He starred as Jack in the musical fantasy Mary Poppins Returns (2018), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. 

-For his performance in the Disney + live stage recording of Hamilton released in 2020, he received Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Award nominations.