Canciones de Navidad: Real-life musical stories by composer Jaime Lozano

Canciones de Navidad
Real-life musical stories by composer Jaime Lozano makes its Lucille Lortel Theater
debut this Wednesday, December 15, 2021 at 7pm
One of 12 shows of TINSEL: A Global Holiday Festival

Praise for Jaime Lozano

“Songs by an Immigrant establishes Jaime as a force to be reckoned with in musical theater, in Latin music, or wherever else he wants to go.”
– Lin-Manuel Miranda.

“With its accessible melodies and robust harmonies, the score by Jaime Lozano and Tommy Newman earns comparisons to Stephen Flaherty‘s music for Once on This Island”
– The New York Times, on The Yellow Brick Road

“Jaime Lozano is a thrilling new talent on the musical theater scene and if ‘Songs by an Immigrant’ is any indication, his will be a name we’ll be hearing from…in all languages…for many years to come.”
– Splash Magazines

This week, composer, lyricist and storyteller, Jaime Lozano will share moving and humorous tales of “La Famiglia,” his artistic, non-blood family of latinos and latinas who settled in New York City. All accomplished Broadway and Off-Broadway actors, they will perform his show, Canciones para Navidad (Songs for Christmas), a concert full of stories and songs about finding a new home, learning a new language, trying to fit in, pursuing the American dream, missing their native lands and what it means to celebrate Christmas as an immigrant in a new country. These universal stories are for people of all backgrounds – ultimately, they inspire solidarity.

Canciones para Navidad has played to pre-pandemic full houses at Christmastime at Joe’s Pub and 54 Below. The songs and stories are personal to the performers, portrayed with feeling and candor, touching upon their struggles and victories in city life and in the world of musical theater. This year, they share their COVID 19 stories, how money dried up and how they coped with unpredictability from their unique hispanic immigrant perspective. They find ways to shed tears and to laugh with each other. For example, Lozano mentioned in an interview with me that his five-year old son speaks “Spanglish” without consciously knowing which is which – five words of spanish and three words of english, mixed together spontaneously. Lozano has an accent and his little son also corrects his father’s pronunciation from time to time.

Born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico, Jaime Lozano came for the first time to New York City In 2007. He was the first Mexican to receive a full-scholarship to NYU’s Masters Program in Musical Theater and Writing. There were some latino and latina actors on Broadway at that time, however, he was one of the few composer-writers in the Broadway world with a latino, bilingual immigrant background. He studied classical and contemporary composition and orchestration while at Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Mexico. He wrote musicals and arranged spanish adaptations of Broadway musicals. In this way, he became a seasoned arranger before he came to the US.

Lozano crossed paths with Lin-Manuel Miranda during his first year in New York and they eventually became colleagues and trusted friends. The Hamilton superstar considers Lozano the “next big thing” on Broadway.

Lozano recently orchestrated Miranda’s music for the movie version In the Heights, full circle from when he first experienced the musical in 2007 in a little theater on 37th Street. He found a flyer which had the photograph of an actor that looked like his brother on it, so he wanted to attend. Experiencing the musical inspired Lozano artistically more than anything else since his arrival in the USA. The actors of In The Heights spoke and sang in his native language and it brought him to the edge of his seat. It made him realize that he could tell his own stories on stage and that those stories could make a difference. The show encouraged him to do what he loves to do. During that first year in the City, he got to know Miranda and Alex Lacamoire – they were all part of the latin theater community. Among many other accomplishments, Lacamoire composed Tik Tik Boom and orchestrated Hamilton. He also became Lozano’s sponsor for his artist visa.

In 2010, Lozano faced the unfortunate experience of being scammed by an unethical immigrant lawyer. His visa was denied and he had to return to Mexico, where was stuck for more than three years from 2011-2015. Although this interrupted his time in New York City, it clearly provided artistic material for his stage shows and musical compositions. He also met his wife, singer, songwriter and actor Florencia Cuenca, during those years in Mexico.  They traveled to New York City for Christmas and for their honeymoon in December 2015. Instead of going back to Mexico they decided to move to New York during that trip and have been here ever since.

As his sponsor, Lacamoire made this possible for the couple, an example of the trust and collaboration of their community. Miranda wrote letters for Lozano to help him receive his visa as well as for his Green Card which he received just a few months ago. Cuenca is one of the five cast members of Canciones de Navidad together with Lozano and the actors listed below.

Lozano also arranged a song that the Broadway cast of In the Heights recorded for one of the yearly Carols for a Cure projects that Broadway Cares creates every year. He had the opportunity to work with those actors during the holiday season while he worked on his own holiday show. Navidad is always a wonderful time of the year for him.

You can see him in a cameo role in Manuel-Miranda production of the film version of Lacamore’s Tik Tik Boom (2021) in a historic scene with many famous Broadway composers including Jason Robert Brown, Marc Shaiman and Thomas Robert Kitt.

Lozano’s musically rich message is about community. He invites us to open our hearts to conversations about being different, that we can be happy being different, embrace a global community and recognize how we are the same in work, play and entertainment. Canciones de Navidad is his celebration of New Yorkers, the likes of which you know well, and will applaud.

With Mauricio Martínez (On Your Feet!), Florencia Cuenca (A Never-Ending Line), Marina Pires (On Your Feet!), and Cedric Leiba, Jr. (Carmen La Cubana).  and an all-Latin band formed by Ruben Rodríguez (bass), Jhoely Garay (guitar) and Joel Mateo (drums).