Antoine Reynaldo Diel was born in Manila, Philippines, into a musical family — his mother, Luna Reynaldo Diel, was a singer who toured internationally and was among the first Filipino vocalists to perform in the Soviet Union. Diel sang in church from childhood, competing and performing publicly before the family moved to Los Angeles, where he continued singing through high school and went on to earn Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Vocal Arts from the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. His training spans opera, musical theater, and choral and solo concert work in both secular and sacred settings, along with ADR and voice-over work for film.
Diel eventually left a desk job in Los Angeles for New Orleans, a city he'd never lived in but felt pulled toward. The name of his band, the New Orleans Misfit Power, comes from a conversation with a friend while watching Trombone Shorty perform at Lafayette Square: New Orleans, the friend told him, has a way of calling home the people who never quite felt like they belonged anywhere else. Diel took the phrase and built a band, and a philosophy, around it. The Misfit Power has taken various forms over the years, from trio to seven-piece, and often joins forces with the NOLA Dukes.
Diel's 2014 debut, On the Corner of Hope and New Orleans, backed by the Misfit Power, was named one of OffBeat Magazine's top 25 Louisiana albums of the year and earned him the first of three consecutive Best of the Beat Award nominations for Best Male Vocalist (2014–2016). OffBeat's Geraldine Wyckoff praised the record's “expressive elegance,” singling out the original “Animal's Testimony” — a nod to “The Animal,” Diel's stage nickname from his years fronting Elvis Schoenberg's Orchestre Surreal and Vaud & the Villains. His 2016 follow-up, In My Father's House, paired him with pianist and organist Sam Kuslan for a gospel record inspired by his childhood love of Mahalia Jackson, reworking three of her signature songs alongside a jazz-funeral arrangement of “How Great Thou Art.”
Beyond his own bands, Diel is a fixture of the city's collaborative scene, having performed with Chris Severin's band, Ocie Davis, Matt Perrine's Sunflower City, and the Lena Prima Band, and co-leads the A2D2 Experience with vocalist Arséne DeLay and the Three Filipino Tenors. He shared a stage with Paul Sanchez & the Rolling Road Show at the 2013 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and returned to Jazz Fest in 2016 backing Chris Severin's band on Allen Toussaint's “Brickyard Blues.” He is also an Adjunct Professor of Voice in the Popular Commercial Music Department at Loyola University New Orleans.
