As a performer-scholar Randall Harlow's interests range from empirical performance research to the Inuit organ tradition, as well as organ transcription repertoire and the 21st-century avant-garde. He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music in addition to graduate and undergraduate degrees from Indiana and Emory Universities. His principle teachers have included Hans Davidsson, Timothy Albrecht, Christopher Young and William Porter in improvisation. Additional study has included summer organ academies in Canada, Sweden, and England, while international performances have taken him to England, Russia, and Greenland. 

As a performer, Dr. Harlow maintains an intense focus on contemporary music and currently serves on the national Committee for New Music Competitions and Commissions of the American Guild of Organists. His numerous World and North American premieres include compositions by Stephen Ingham, John Anthony Lennon, Ron Nagorcka, Sven-David Sandström, Kaikhosru Sorabji, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others. Also an avid performer with orchestra, Dr. Harlow has performed concertos by Lou Harrison, Chen Yi and the North American premieres of organ concertos by Petr Eben, Tilo Medek, and Giles Swayne. He is also a leading pioneer in promoting electroacoustic composition for the organ, including premieres of works for organ with live-electronics by Steve Everett, René Uijlenhoet, Steven Rice, and Taylan Cihan.  This Fall he will premiere new works on concerts at the Eastman School of Music and Cornell University and perform in improvisation with the Cornell Avant Garde Ensemble (CAGE).  Exercising another interest, this year Dr. Harlow will record his own organ transcription of Franz Liszt's Études d'exécution transcendante, becoming the first person ever to perform these legendary works on the organ.

Recent research projects include the first comprehensive documentation and study of the pipe organ culture of Greenland.  Dr. Harlow's presentations at conferences at Harvard University, the Westfield Center, the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, the Göteborg International Organ Academy (Sweden), and the Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival span topics in empirical keyboard psychohaptics research and Hyperorgan design. His doctoral thesis focused on recent experimental organ design, with a prospectus for new design dimensions relevant to 21st Century compositional aesthetics.  In 2008 the Eastman School of Music awarded him the annual Presser Music Award for "demonstrating excellence and outstanding promise for a distinguished career in the field of music."  Dr. Harlow has taught organ performance and music theory as a graduate assistant at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Rochester, and Indiana University and has recently served on the faculties of Nazareth College as an Adjunct Lecturer and Cornell University as Acting University Organist and Lecturer.