Probably not in eighth grade! (laughter) Also, it was a capella, so I wasn’t worried about the chord progression and things, it was just these melodies that I was singing. And it’s time to take all that creative energy that’s happening in the margins of your notebook and bring it into class with me and with us.” He encouraged me to write for the student theater group at our high school, and nudged me: “They’ve never done a musical - go write musicals for them.”Īnd your songs were evolved enough to do that? And the teacher sort of called me out on a subsequent essay I wrote for his class, saying, “You’ve been hibernating in the back of my class. I wrote a song for the key moments of each chapter, recorded myself a capella on a tape recorder - I was the kid in the group who did all the work - and I had the other kids lip-sync to my voice. We had an assignment where we had to teach three chapters, and I decided to make a musical of every chapter we had to teach. My eighth grade English teacher assigned us Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen,” and it was the rare English-class book where I was hooked.
And it really was a teacher who brought me out of just writing songs about girls in the back of the classroom. (laughter) Girls in my class that I had a crush on. It depends on where you want to start! I was always kind of making up songs, but I started seriously figuring them out on the piano and writing them in around seventh grade. So it feels very surreal to see my songs be a part of the canon, all stacked up in one place.ĭo you remember the first song or songs you wrote? If you play piano, I think everyone’s Bible growing up was the Beatles two-volume set, and “The Ultimate Broadway Fake Book” - there’s certain staples that make a musical theater person. I learned through songbooks - going to Colony and getting the sheet music for songs or show tunes and figuring them out on my own. It all really also reminds me of how far we’ve come. I learned rudimentary music theory in his class - a 12-tone piece I wrote for his class is still one of the things my hand doodles when I’m writing. We invited a bunch of teachers - my best friend since kindergarten, Danny San Germano, still teaches at my old high school, he’s the chair of the arts department - and my ninth grade music teacher, Michael Stratechuk, is here. It feels even more surreal with the company we have here. So I’m fresh off an Acela, and I went to the Drama Book Shop and this book was there, waiting. to see Phillipa Soo in “Guys and Dolls” at the Kennedy Center.
You grew up with musical theater and piano lessons - how does it feel to have your own songbook?Įmotional, and really, really surreal - this is actually the first day I’m seeing it in print, because I was traveling all last week: We had the Hamburg premiere of “Hamilton,” and then I just went down to D.C. When he heard the applause for that, he started playing another song,” he laughs, “but then the teacher very gently led him offstage.”ĭuring the party, Lin was kind enough to duck into a conference room for 20 minutes with Variety to give what may be the most substantial interview we’ve ever gotten in 20 minutes: About the songbook, his early years as a songwriter, his process, how some of the songs for “Hamilton” and especially “Encanto” came together, and more. “When he heard the applause, he was like, and then he played another song. He said that a light bulb went off for the young Lin when playing piano at a middle-school recital. October 13, 2022Įarlier, Luis Miranda, Lin’s dad, told Variety a bit about his son’s early years as a performer. The star of the event was my grandson Alejandro who played Dos Oruguitas. An intimate group of music lovers, including & Sebastian’s music teachers, and Miranda family fellows, met to celebrate #MirandaCollection of songs.
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