Randall Eng

RANDALL ENG founded and leads the AOP-NYU/Tisch Opera Lab with director Sam Helfrich. Under their guidance, GMTWP composers and librettists have created more than 70 short operas in collaboration with Tisch’s Department of Design, American Opera Projects, the New School, and partner organizations the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Stonewall Inn, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hudson Guild, International House, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, the Walt Whitman Initiative, and NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts.

Randall’s own work lies at the intersection of opera, music-theatre, and jazz. His latest opera Norfolk (with librettist Monique Truong) is based on his father’s childhood in Norfolk, Virginia and Guangzhou, China. A commission from White Snake Projects, a 15-minute version of the opera premiered in 2023 alongside a set of five musical interludes created in conjunction with the hip hop artist Jason Chu. A full-length version of the opera is currently in progress.

Randall’s first opera Florida (with librettist Donna Di Novelli, Visiting Arts Professor) premiered at UrbanArias in Washington, DC in 2018, after previous presentations at Lyric Opera Cleveland, New York City Opera’s VOX Festival, and the Public Theater. Florida began its life as Randall and Donna’s GMTWP thesis.

Randall’s other operas include Before the Night Sky (written with Donna), Henry’s Wife (with librettist Alexis Bernier), and a forthcoming opera with librettist Mark Campbell; these pieces have been presented by OPERA America, the Center for Contemporary Opera, American Opera Projects, the Virginia Arts Festival, Manhattan School of Music, and the Shaw Festival. His other operas and theatrical works include The Dangers of Electric Lighting (Luna Stage Theatre), Cocktails (Circle East Theater), Usher, Falling (Opera Vindaloo Festival), and the video opera The Woman in the Green Coat (Edinburgh Fringe Festival).

He is currently setting the poem “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly as a 30-minute song cycle for two tenors and two baritones, a commission from Mirror Visions Ensemble that will premiere at Merkin Concert Hall in September 2025. He last worked with Mirror Visions in 2023, when they commissioned and premiered his setting of the Walt Whitman poem “Miracles”. In 2019, the Boston Pops premiered his work Harbor, a collaboration with U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith for soprano and orchestra. His choral work Remain, a found text setting of a “Know Your Rights” immigration pamphlet, was commissioned and premiered at Cooper Union in 2018 by Ted Sperling’s 120-voice chorus MasterVoices. Other non-theatrical works include commissions for Albany Symphony Orchestra’s Dogs of Desire, the Composer’s Voice, countertenor Jordan Rutter-Covatto, baritone Marcus DeLoach, and violinist Conway Kuo.

Randall frequently works as a musical dramaturge, musical supervisor, musical director, and pianist, specializing in new operatic, experimental, or jazz-oriented scores. He was an advisor on the 2011 Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess to musical adapter Diedre Murray, and has worked on many of Diedre’s other music-theatre pieces, as well as works by composers Anthony Davis, Leroy Jenkins, Kirsten Childs, Rachel Portman, Will Todd, and others.

He has been awarded grants, prizes, and residencies from the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, the Ucross Foundation, the Bang on a Can Summer Institute, the John Duffy Composers Institute at the Virginia Arts Festival, Boston Metro Opera, American Opera Projects, the Eugene O’Neill Music Theatre Conference, Tapestry New Opera, and New Dramatists.

Randall is a graduate of Harvard University, Cambridge University, and GMTWP (Cycle 7). A Staten Island native and former Jeopardy! champion, he lives in Chelsea with his wife Katie Baldwin Eng (Cycle 11) and their 17-year-old daughter Olive (Cycle 40?). www.randalleng.com