BLAKE LIAHONA ALLEN, PhD is an internationally acclaimed composer and musician, celebrated for his award-winning compositions and arrangements performed by prestigious orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. His works have graced iconic venues including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

 

Allen boasts three top-ten Billboard albums (INSOMNIA, the shards of an honor code junkie, Sonatas) and has collaborated with luminaries such as Kristin Chenoweth, Renée Fleming, Joel Grey, Chita Rivera, Rebecca Luker, among others. His versatility spans engagements with New York City Ballet, Broadway and off-Broadway productions, and performances alongside The Who, The Eagles, Andrea Bocelli, Phillip Glass, Caroline Shaw, and Pink Martini.

 

Notable achievements include contributions to Emmy-nominated PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center broadcasts, and composing scores for Apple TV's documentary *Conversion*, the award-winning *Doris Dear’s Gurl Talk*, and *Shade: Queens of NYC*. Allen's impact extends to his role as music director, arranger, and orchestrator, leading the record-breaking 2019 revival of the Sherman Brothers' musical *Over Here!* and curating the acclaimed concert series *An Evening With…*

 

Further solidifying his influence, Allen has toured globally as music director, composer, and arranger for stars from *RuPaul’s Drag Race*. He holds a PhD in Performance and Composition from New York University, where his pioneering reductive analysis of György Ligeti’s Viola Sonata stands as a landmark in music scholarship.

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LONGER BIO

BLAKE ALLEN, PhD is an internationally recognized, award-winning composer, violist, and producer with a unique voice in contemporary music. Often merging the worlds of opera and musical theatre with traditional classical forms, Allen sits at the forefront of a surrealist, maximalist, and humanist world where his talents are only enumerated through the creation of a bespoke genre tailored to the brilliant artists he collaborates with.

An ex-Mormon, Allen's themes are imbued with a juxtaposition of darker, queer themes and a hypocritical meritocracy of Disney ideals. Allen's compositional credits include INSOMNIA (No Reverse Records, 2024; #3 Billboard & #1 iTunes Classical; ) which arrives straight from Carnegie Hall. the shards of an honor code junkie (NoReverse Records, 2021; #1 Amazon Classical; #12 Billboard), FOLK WANDERING (Pipeline Theatre Co., 2019), Farmyard Follies, and the film score to Conversion (2024 Gravitas Ventures) Upcoming: The Waves, an opera with a libretto by Will Nunziata based on Virginia Woolf's novel (1931) and The Ceiling, a musi-opera based on the O. Henry Award Winning short story of the same name (2002) by Kevin Brockmeier.

Having lived in the classical world for most of his life, Allen's debut solo album, Sonatas (#4 Billboard; #1 iTunes Classical), was released in April 2020 – four years after its debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – and depicts the ethereal worlds of the deep sea and alien life in rural America, both scientific themes that permeate Allen's creative output.

In his music, Allen finds ways to blur simplicity with lush melancholy without falling into saccharine cliché. As an extension of the simplicity found in Richard M. Sherman's melodies, Allen's swoonful orchestrations have made him a recognizeable force in the new music scene.

Allen received his PhD from New York University, where he created the singular, reductive analysis of György Ligeti's Viola Sonata.

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