Lin-Manuel Miranda, Renee Fleming to Speak at Penn's 260th Commencement

Lin-Manuel Miranda, a 2015 MacArthur Foundation Award recipient and the Tony- and Grammy-award winning composer and lyricist of the Broadway show IN THE HEIGHTS and of Hamilton, a groundbreaking musical rooted in hip-hop and intertwined with R & B, jazz, and pop, will deliver the address at the 2016 University of Pennsylvania Commencement on Monday, May 16.

The announcement was made today by Vice President and University Secretary Leslie Laird Kruhly.

"We are honored to bestow our highest degree on Lin-Manuel Miranda and have him speak at Penn's 260th Commencement," Penn President Amy Gutmann said. "Miranda is one of the most innovative and stunningly brilliant artistic voices of and for our time. As a lyricist, composer, playwright and actor, he has accomplished nothing short of remaking the great American artistic form of musical theater and telling the history of our founding through the most creative, evocative and thought provoking contemporary lens. In doing so, he has woven bold stories of our lives that are transformative and provocative and inspire and challenge us to not be bound by convention. As Miranda's title character Hamilton raps, evoking Penn's own spirit: "I'm just like my country/ I'm young, scrappy and hungry/And I'm not throwing away my shot."

Miranda's current musical success, "Hamilton," for which he wrote the play, music and lyrics and plays the title role, opened on Broadway in 2015 following a sold-out run at New York's Public Theater. Off-Broadway, "Hamilton" received a record-breaking 10 Lortel Awards, as well as three Outer Critic Circle Awards, eight Drama Desk Awards, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Musical and an OBIE for Best New American Play. The Broadway cast recording of "Hamilton" has been nominated for a 2016 Grammy Award.

His "In the Heights" received a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album in 2009 and was a 2009 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for drama. In 2014, Miranda received an Emmy Award with Tom Kitt for their song, "Bigger" from the 67th Annual Tony Awards.

At the Commencement ceremony, Miranda will receive an honorary doctor of arts degree. Other 2016 Penn honorary degree recipients will be Hawa Abdi, Elizabeth E. Bailey, David Brooks, Renée Fleming, Sylvester James Gates Jr., Asma Jahangir and Eric R. Kandel.

Fleming is a Grammy-award winning opera and classical performing artist and National Medal of Arts recipient. Her career includes recitals spanning five continents and includes more than 240 performances at the Metropolitan Opera. She performed at President Obama's 2009 inaugural celebration, at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, at the 2014 Super Bowl, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and at the Brandenburg Gate on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her extensive television and radio broadcast credits include the Metropolitan Opera's "Live in HD" series and "Live from Lincoln Center" on PBS. In 2010, Fleming became the first creative consultant at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She will be awarded an honorary doctor of music degree.

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