Program Notes: Migguel Anggelo: LatinXoxo

May 5, 2023 |

PROGRAM INFORMATION

Migguel Anggelo: LatinXoxo

Friday, May 5 and Saturday, May 6, 2023
8:00 PM
The Studio

Artists

Conceived by Migguel Anggelo
C. Julian Jiménez, book
Jaime Lozano, musical direction and arrangements
Ryan Park, costumes
Jaime Lozano, piano and guitar
Saúl Cosme, guitar
Joel Mateo, drums and percussion
Yahir Montes, bass
Jessi Cotter, Production Manager
Adrian Alexander Alea, direction

Synopsis

LatinXoxo is Migguel Anggelo's nonconforming and self-accepting rallying cry: a break from "Latin Lover” clichés and his own Venezuelan father's gendered expectations. With indelible precision, weaving in and out of the audience, the artist connects past and present while unraveling the stereotypes that would otherwise constrain him. It is a queer, artful mashup of theater, humor, physical movement, and sumptuous song selections -- spanning decades of pop hits, his own compositions, and the Spanish boleros of his youth. With equal doses of sensitivity and sensationalism, Migguel Anggelo reminds us that our own self-worth is right there in the mirror.

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PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Please be considerate of others and turn off all phones and watch alarms. Photography and recording of any kind are not permitted. Thank you.

Biographies

MIGGUEL ANGGELO

With the “showmanship of Desi Arnaz and the performance art of Klaus Nomi” (Theater Scene), Migguel Anggelo is a Venezuelan-born / Brooklyn and Miami-based multidisciplinary artist.

Migguel Anggelo’s work explores the intersections of queer, Latino, and immigration identities, as well as the role of the artist in contemporary society. He was a 2020 Resident Artist of the NY Presenters Consortium and was previously a 2019 Joe’s Pub Working Group resident. As a musician, Migguel Anggelo has released two albums (Dónde estará Matisse and La Casa Azul) and as a theater artist, has been awarded residencies to develop new works at Lincoln Center, MASS MoCA, Miami Light Project, Joe’s Pub, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, BRIC, and the Cultural Arts Center, Montgomery College. He has been featured in festivals like LPAC’s ROUGH DRAFT and Provincetown’s AFTERGLOW and has served as a cultural attaché, under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, in two separate 10-city tours of Russia.

Migguel Anggelo has been touring his outrageously queer and gender-bending concert experience, LatinXoxo, created with J. Julian Christopher and Jaime Lozano, and directed by Adrian Alexander Alea. The production will headline The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival and travel to cultural centers nationwide after.

Concurrently, the artist is rigorously developing and touring English with an Accent, a hybrid, dance-theater production, narrated in a storytelling song-cycle backed by a company of ten dancers. An immigration tale told through the eyes of a newly arrived caterpillar in New York City fleeing the crime and noxious dictatorship of Venezuela, the work contains original music and lyrics by Migguel Anggelo and Jaime Lozano and is directed, choreographed, and developed by internationally acclaimed, Avihai Haham. The production made its premiere at the GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington D.C. this past April, co-presented by Washington Performing Arts with additional tour dates to be announced.

During the recent pause in 2020 live performance, the team released the short, musical film, Maid in America as part of National Queer Theater and Dixon Place’s 2020 Virtual Criminal Queerness Festival. Migguel Anggelo has helmed several other performance works, including So Close: Love & Hate (2017/18), Another Son of Venezuela (2015/16), and I, Inmigrante (2015), all co-created with Obie Award-winner David Drake.

www.migguelanggelo.com IG: @migguelanggelo

JAIME LOZANO
Musical Direction, Piano, Guitar, and Arrangements

Originally from Monterrey, Mexico, Jaime Lozano is an accomplished musician, composer, arranger, and producer, heralded as the “next big thing” by Hamilton’s Lin‐Manuel Miranda. As Migguel Anggelo’s longtime collaborator, the two have co-created Anggelo’s LatinXoxo and the album and stage production of English with an Accent as well as performed So Close: Love & Hate and are at work on a new immigration musical with playwright C. Quintana entitled The Last Supper.
Additional theatrical credits include Tlatelolco (Mexican Premiere), Myths (Mexican Premiere), El Otro Oz (formerly The Yellow Brick Road—Off-Broadway & National Tour), Carmen La Cubana (European Tour), Children of Salt (NYMF 2016 “Best of Fest” Production), A Never-Ending Line (Comédie Nation in Paris, France & Off-Broadway), Savage (UAB at Birmingham), Present Perfect (Live & In Color). Albums: Tlatelolco, R.Evolución Latina’s Dare to Go Beyond, Doreen Montalvo's American Soul/Latin Heart, A Never-Ending Line, Jaime Lozano & The Familia: Songs by an Immigrant with liner notes by Lin-Manuel Miranda (these last three released by Broadway Records). Film: In The Heights (orchestrations). Currently working on: Songs by an Immigrant Vol. 2, Broadway in Spanglish and Desaparecidas and Frida, The Musical.

Jaime can be seen in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial feature film debut Tick, Tick… Boom! alongside other celebrated Broadway composers. He is a 2020-2022 Joe’s Pub Working Group Resident Artist, a 2020/2021 member of The Civilians R&D Group as well as 2021 JACK Resident Artist. He holds a BFA in Music & Composition from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León and an MFA from NYU/Tisch, Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program (Full Tuition Scholarship). Jaime is part of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, AFM Local 802, BMI, and both a GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY voting member.

www.jaimelozano.net IG: @jaimelozano

RYAN PARK
Costume Design

Ryan is a New York City-based costume designer of theater, opera, short films, dance, as well as live events. Selected credits include: Atalanta (Juilliard) Dial M… (The Old Globe) Evita (Drury Lane) Kinky Boots (Paramount Theatre) ALIEN/NATION (Williamstown Theatre Festival) American Dream Study (FOA) Joseph and the Amazing…50th Anniversary Concert (Lincoln Center) Ariadne... (Cincinnati Opera) Little Shop (ACT & The Cape Playhouse) Cabaret (Boston Conservatory) LatinXoxo (Joe’s Pub) Beauty and the Beast (Drury Lane) Altar Boyz (The Cape Playhouse) Joseph and the Amazing... (Drury Lane) Broadway Associate: Mrs. Doubtfire, My Fair Lady (LCT), Warpaint, The King and I (LCT), Fiddler on the Roof, Gigi, The Bridges of Madison County. Ryan is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University where he was awarded the Elizabeth Schrader Kimberly Scholarship and is also a proud member of United Scenic Artists, USA 829.

RyanParkDesign.com IG: @RyanParkDesign

SAUL COSME
Guitar

Saul Cosme is a Mexican guitarist, composer and music educator born in Mexico city and based in New York since 2014. In Mexico, he studied at the Lafaro Jazz Institute where he played and learned from some of the best jazz musicians in Mexico such as Agustín Bernal, Hector Rodriguez, Gabriel Puentes, Roberto Verástegui, among others.

Saul moved to New York to study Jazz Music at Purchase College in 2014 where he received the Joe Williams Scholarship. There he studied with the legendary musicians John Abercrombie and Vic Juris. In New York, he has played in some of the most important jazz clubs in the world such as Blue Note, Birdland and Dizzy’s Club at Lincoln Center, among others.

In 2019 he released his Project Saul Cosme Quintet that combines Saul Cosme’s Mexican roots with the Jazz tradition and Latin music, a result of living in two of the most active cities in the world:, New York and Mexico City. “Live in New York” is his first recording, released in March, 2019.

JOEL MATEO
Drums and Percussion

Joel Mateo is a drummer and percussionist from Ponce, Puerto Rico. He began his musical studies at an early age at the Escuela Libre de Música Juan Morell Campos in Ponce, PR. He continued his music studies completing a BA in the Interamerican University in PR and then an MA at the Aaron Copland School of Music in New York City. His musical range has led him to play and/or record with international artists such as Papo Vazquez, Miguel Zenon, Andy Gonzalez, Bad Bunny, Tego Calderon, Luigi Texidor, William Cepeda, Taylor Mac, Ray Mantilla, Buscabulla and Paoli Mejias among others. Joel currently resides in New York City where he continues to play, record and travel with different artists and groups.

YAHIR MONTES
Bass

Yahir Montes is a Mexican musician originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco. At the age of fourteen he entered the Instituto Universitario de Bellas Artes in the state of Colima where he studied during high school in an arts major and completed a Bachelor of Music with honorable mention, being recognized through the “José Rolón” award as the best student of his generation. In January 2021, he graduated with a Masters in Composition and Arrangement from Universidad Tito Puente in Puebla, Mexico.

Yahir studied under the famous Italian guitarist and composer Simone Iannarelli. In 2014, he won the award for "Mejor Interprete Local" at the international festival "Guitarromanía," organized in the city of Colima. He has performed as a guitarist, bassist and singer in different cities of Mexico, the United States, Costa Rica and Guatemala.

Most recently, Yahir was awarded the PECDA Grant where he was commissioned to produce original classical compositions inspired by the history and culture of Colima, Mexico. He also performed at Lincoln Center twice, for the American Songbook Series as an invited guest of Grammy Award Winning artist Linda Briceño and for the premiere of "Frida, The Musical", a musical based on Frida Kahlo's life.
In January 2020, he premiered an hour of unpublished original classical music for different ensembles and instrumental configurations at the Pinacoteca Universitaria del Estado de Colima within the framework of the 1st Jornada de la Musica, an event created and organized by himself with his alma mater; el Instituto Universitario de Bellas Artes.

At the end of 2020 he worked as a composer for the movie "New York Christmas Wedding,” released on Netflix during the same year, arranging and producing two songs for the film. He also released his first EP as a singer-songwriter entitled "Vivencias" in 2022, produced the mariachi album "De Donde Vengo" for the mexican-american singer DILIA, and premiered the album B SIDE with his classical guitar compositions.

He currently lives and performs his artistic work in New York, USA and Colima, MX.

ADRIAN ALEXANDER ALEA
Direction

Adrian Alea is a Queer and Latine creative producer & director in film, theater, television, and virtual reality based in NYC. As a theater-maker, he is currently the Artistic Producer of The New Group, the Creative Associate of New York City Center’s ENCORES! (Broadway: Into the Woods), and the Associate Director for the HERCULES, the staged musical adaption of the animated film with Disney Theatricals premiered at Paper Mill Playhouse in January 2023. In film and television, Adrian executive produced and produced four short films and a virtual reality piece (including "You Go Girl!" a 2022 Sundance Film Festival Official selection and presented by The New Yorker, "An Intent to the Spirit" starring Moses Sumney & LaChanze currently in post-production, and “O-Dogg” featuring Tariq ‘Black Thought’ Trotter from The Roots), music videos featured at The Guggenheim, and was the Associate Director for ANNIE LIVE! on NBC, starring Taraji P. Henson, Harry Connick Jr. and Nicole Scherzinger.

Immediately after graduating from Columbia University in 2015, Adrian moved to Los Angeles and was on the creative management team for Jennifer Lopez and Benny Medina, where his main projects included her Las Vegas Residency at Planet Hollywood (ALL I HAVE) and the “Ain’t Your Mama” music video.

Past institutional and educational collaborations: The Public Theater, Signature Theatre, Dixon Place, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Classic Stage Company, Play On, Brava Theater Center, Musical Theatre Factory, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Yale University, Fordham University, Pace University, and Northwestern University.

BA: Columbia University. MS: Northwestern University.

adrianalea.com IG: @adrian_a_alea

JESSI COTTER
Production Manager

Off-Broadway: Titanique; A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet; Dana H (Vineyard); Life Sucks; Sincerely Oscar; Black Light; Cruel Intentions: The Musical; Monica: This Play is Not About Monica Lewinsky; Ecovillage; Must; Comedy of Errors (Classic Stage Company). Other Credits: Ballet Fantastique, Dances for a Variable Population, American Dance Machine, Morningside Opera, Encompass New Opera, The Shedd Institute, Oregon Contemporary Theatre. Currently Associate Production Manager at Yale's Schwarzman Center. BA, Willamette University; MFA, Columbia University.