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 the shards of an honor code junkie (NoReverse Records, 2021; #1 Amazon Classical; #12 Billboard), FOLK WANDERING (Pipeline Theatre Co., 2019), Farmyard Follies, the film score to Conversion (2024 Gravitas Ventures), and his forthcoming, junior album INSOMNIA (2024) which arrives straight from Carnegie Hall. Upcoming: 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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