Edwin Lugo

Edwin Lugo, known professionally as Lugo, is a Grammy winning certified vocalist and songwriter, a Broadway actor, and a founding instructor at The NYPAA. A Nuyorican artist raised in the Bronx, he began singing in his father’s church at the age of three and went on to graduate with honors from the High School of Performing Arts, where he studied under Bill Britten and James Moody. He trained further at the AMAS Repertory Theatre in Harlem under Rosetta LeNoire, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and as a drama and music major on scholarship at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a YoungArts alumnus and awardee, and an undefeated winner on Showtime at the Apollo.

As a songwriter and vocalist, Lugo is featured on Just Chillin’ by Norman Brown, which won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album, and he holds a Grammy Award certificate for songwriting and singing. He was signed to RCA Records and has written under BMG Music and Universal Music Group, with hundreds of songs released. Recognized as a pioneer of acid jazz, he has worked across neo soul, Latin, hip hop, funk, and gospel with multi-Grammy winning producers including Bassy Bob Brockmann, Rob Fusari, Justin Strauss, and the Berman Brothers, and he has written for artists including Yomo Toro, Judy Torres, and Ronny Jordan. He performed as a percussionist with Christina Aguilera at the MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall, and he is the founder and president of Love Kiss Music.

On Broadway, Lugo originated the role of Babu Charlie Cruz in Paul Simon’s The Capeman at the Marquis Theatre, directed by Jerry Zaks, alongside Marc Anthony and Rubén Blades. He starred as Freddy in Stand Up Tragedy at Hartford Stage under director Ron Link, performed at Robert Redford’s Sundance Theatre in work directed by Michael Mayer, and appeared as Agamemnon in The Oresteia. He is a member of the Hudson Guild Theatre Company and has collaborated with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater under Miriam Colón. His screen credits include The Knick, The Night Of, High Maintenance, Treme, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, God Friended Me, FBI, NYC 22, and Saturday Night Live.

Lugo has served as an entertainer with Armed Forces Entertainment and the USO since 2005, performing for troops in Japan, Korea, Italy, Spain, and Afghanistan. He received the President’s Volunteer Service Award for his work with children, and he has performed as a vocalist for the National Dance Institute at its Broadway Gala and in schools throughout the tri-state area serving underserved young people. He is the nephew of the Baseball Hall of Famer and Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Roberto Clemente Walker.

That commitment extends to his own students. Lugo has established a named vocal scholarship at The NYPAA to support talented singers with limited resources, so that the deciding factor in whether a young artist gets serious training is the voice and the work ethic rather than the family’s means. It is a fitting gesture from an artist who began in a church choir in the Bronx and reached a Broadway stage, and from a school built on the same premise.

In private vocal coaching at The Conservatory at NYPAA, Lugo works one on one with singers as a soulful tenor who has had to deliver in a church, at the Apollo, in a Broadway house eight times a week, and in a recording booth where the take either works or it does not. He builds technique that holds up under all four sets of conditions, and he coaches interpretation as seriously as sound, because a technically clean phrase that communicates nothing will not book the job. As a founding instructor, he has helped shape how voice is taught at NYPAA since the beginning, and he brings a working songwriter’s ear to helping each student find the material and the sound that are genuinely theirs.