Like Alexander Hamilton, Miranda is a powerful reminder that greatness comes from unlikely places. Lin Manuel Miranda grew up in the New York City neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood. He spent his summers in Puerto Rico with his grandparents. His father is a former political advisor who advised New York City mayor Ed Koch and his mother is a clinical psychologist. From a young age,he loved performing and listening to his parents’ collection of show tunes and Broadway-musical records. He had his first taste of the stage in a 6th grade musical review. Highly intelligent, he was able to attend Hunter College High School, and college at Wesleyan University where he graduated in 2002. While there, he formed Freestyle Love Supreme, a freestyle rap group, while in college and his sophomore year he wrote the first iteration of “In The Heights. “ He later continued to work on his musical with friends Quiara and Tommy Kail while working as an English teacher. They managed to get the show into the Public Theater. He played the lead character Usnavi. The show was well received and it went on to Broadway, and won two Tonys. It won the Awards for Best Musical and for Best Original Score. It also won the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Also in 2009, Miranda was asked to perform at the White House for the Evening of Poetry, Music and Spoken Word and although he was invited to perform something from” In the Heights,” he decided it would be more timely to perform the first song in what was then his proposed concept album/mixtape about the life of Alexander Hamilton. We were in the midst of the financial crisis and President Obama was at the beginning of his Administration. Although Miranda was nervous, his new songs went over very well. Encouraged to develop the idea further, that “album/mixtape project” eventually turned into Hamilton: The Musical by January 2015 when it debuted in the Public Theater. It subsequently went to the Richard Rodgers on Broadway and opened on August 6, 2015. The rest, you might say is history. S AL U D O S H I S PAN O S
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