Blake Allen's INSOMNIA to Receive Recording Featuring Jeanna de Waal and Cree Carrico

No Reverse Records has announced the Pre-Order of Blake Allens‘s INSOMNIA: Sextets for Piano, String Quartet & Voice - Nos. 1 & 2. Allen’s junior full-length record chronicles a night of an insomniac narrator and was inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Sleep and Waking” originally penned in 1934. The two multi-movement works presented on the album, which features Broadway Star Jeanna de Waal as “Voice” (Sweeney Todd, Diana: The Musical), Cree Carrico as “Soprano”, and the acclaimed Argus Quartet conducted by Allen originally premiered in 2022 at Carnegie Hall.

This record follows the Billboard charting success of Allen and No Reverse’s impactful first collaboration, The Shards of an Honor Code Junkie. This second collaboration again features Grammy Nominee and collaborative pianist Christopher Koelzer and will be presented through Apple Digital Masters.

Composer Blake Allen shares, “I am so thrilled to bring INSOMNIA to a wide audience after its critically acclaimed debut at Carnegie Hall 2022. It is exhilarating to be able to immortalize the sextets with the artists I wrote the pieces for: from the illustrious Argus Quartet to the crystalline dexterity of Chris Koelzer's piano skills, to the brilliant interpretations of both Cree and Jeanna, I cannot wait for you all to go on the stream of conscious journey with me.

Working with Daniel Alba and Oscar Zambrano is also a dream - and what they were able to achieve by deconstructing the instrumentation into a 360 sound is something I have yet to hear. It is fantastic Apple Digital Masters is working with us on our release so the eerie and introspective sound Daniel and Oscar have created can be heard in all its 88.2 hz glory.

And it goes without saying how immensely grateful I am to once again be releasing with No Reverse Records. Ashley Kate and Mitchell are not only the most supportive team imaginable, our collaboration is fluid, poised, and perfectly aligned."

The record was produced by Allen, Ashley Kate Adams and Mitchell Walker of No Reverse Records and was recorded and mixed by Daniel Alba (Jack White, Nora Jones) and mastered by multi-Grammy-winning engineer Oscar Zambrano of Zampol Productions (Harry Styles, Sting, Justin Timberlake).

No Reverse Records is led by Ashley Kate Adams, Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard & Mitchell Walker.

ABOUT Blake Allen

Known for scoring "strings to make you swoon" (New York Times), 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 music is imbued with darker, queer themes juxtaposed against hypocritical meritocracy of Disney ideals. As an extension of the simplicity found in Richard M. Sherman's melodies, Allen finds ways to blur lucidity into lush melancholy without falling into saccharine cliche´. Allen's compositional credits include the chart-topping the shards of an honor code junkie (No Reverse Records), Conversion (Gravitas Ventures), Folk Wandering (Pipeline Theatre Co.), Farmyard Follies, and INSOMNIA which arrives straight from Carnegie Hall.

Having lived in the classical world for most of his life, Allen's chart-topping debut solo album, Sonatas, 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.

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