WINNER Concept EP Featuring Taylor Iman Jones and Jade McLeod To Be Released This Week

In celebration of Pride 2025, New York Theatre Barn will release a concept album of the original musical Winner on July 4, 2025, available wherever you stream music. Click here for the pre-save link.

The 6-track EP features Taylor Iman Jones (Six, Head Over Heels), Jade McLeod (Jagged Little Pill), Alex Wyse (Good Night, Oscar, Spring Awakening), Diana Huey (The Little Mermaid), Jessie MacBeth (Xena: Warrior Musical), Luis Villabon (A Chorus Line, The Old Globe’s Destiny of Desire), Kristopher Stanley Ward (Tina, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), Logan Leilani Blount, Gabby Boera, Federico Hradek, and Cay Ryan Murray. 

Written by Nico Juber (Millennials Are Killing Musicals) and Joe Barros (Yasuke: The Legend of the Black Samurai), Winner tells a coming-out and coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of a rigged high school election in 1999, centering a female-identifying queer narrative and bisexuality. 
 
The EP is Produced and Mixed by Lloyd Kikoler, with Music Direction, Orchestrations, and Arrangements by Bálint Varga (piano) and the rest of the band includes Ethan Hack-Chabot (guitar), Dave D’aranjo (bass), and Noah Hadland (drums). The album is Executive Produced by Héctor Flores Jr. and Kate Trammell for Theatre Barn Records, with the support of Co-Producers Carrie Murray, Catherine Gray and Debra Smalley, and Associate Producers Dunbar Hofmann Productions, Juber Productions, Julie Peterson Klein, and Take My Shot Productions.

Developed in New York, London, and most recently at The Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals, Winner will be produced at UC San Diego this summer by Blindspot Collective and at New Jersey’s Monroe Township High School this fall.

New York Theatre Barn is dedicated to releasing EPs and concept albums of original musicals in development with Theatre Barn Records. Recent releases include the queer musicals Xena: Warrior Musical, Sueños: Our American Musical, and Café con Leche. Watch the EP cast of Winner perform “The First Day” on New York Theatre Barn’s Pride 2025 video playlist, featuring footage from album recording sessions of queer musicals with queer Broadway icons, including Jenn Colella, L Morgan Lee, Taylor Iman Jones, and Jade McLeod. The video playlist can be accessed here.