BLAKE ALLEN, PhD is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning composer, playwright, musician, and music supervisor whose genre-defying work fuses classical rigor with theatrical innovation and queer storytelling. His compositions, scores, and orchestrations have been performed by world-renowned ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, with performances at iconic venues including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, and Strathmore Music Center. Allen hails from down in the West Texas town of El Paso and currently lives in New York City. 

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Allen’s original works include INSOMNIA (Carnegie Hall), Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (upcoming), Aprés Moi (upcoming) the shards of an honor code junkie (Trevor Project), Folk Wandering (Pipeline Theatre Co./A.R.T. NY, Ars Nova, Soho Rep), Witch Perfect (international tour), Farmyard Follies (Provincetown Theater), Kelly [1955] (New York Theatre Festival), Boston|Nebraska (Kimmel Harding Nelson Center), Doris Dear’s Gurl Talk (Broadway on Demand), Conversion (Apple TV+), Shade: Queens of NYC (Fusion TV), and HOCKET. His work has garnered recognition from MAC, Telly, W3, Communicator, BroadwayWorld, GLAM, and NYU Research Awards.

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He has released three top-ten Billboard albums — INSOMNIA (#3), the shards of an honor code junkie (#10), and Sonatas (#4) — and has collaborated with luminaries such as Kristin Chenoweth, Renée Fleming, Joel Grey, Chita Rivera, Rebecca Luker, and more. As a performer, Allen has appeared with the New York City Ballet, New York City Pops, on and off Broadway (Notre Dame de Paris, Tootsie, An American in Paris, Living on Love, Stephen King's Misery, Beardo, Tamar of the River, Over Here!, Folk Wandering), and in concert with The Who, The Eagles, Andrea Bocelli, Caroline Shaw, Philip Glass, and Pink Martini.

He created the award-winning concert series An Evening With..., working closely with the Library of Congress and the estates of cultural icons including the Sherman Brothers, Mary Martin, Natalie and Nat King Cole, Doris Day, and Dionne Warwick.

 

Known for his ability to move fluidly between high art and queer pop culture, Allen has also toured internationally as music director, composer, and arranger for stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

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Allen holds a PhD in Performance and Composition from NYU, where he authored the only reductive analysis of György Ligeti’s Viola Sonata. He is a proud graduate of NYU, CCM, and BYU.