Randy Bauer's work embraces composition, jazz, improvisation, performance, and teaching. His compositions have received several major awards (including three ASCAP/Morton Gould awards) and have been premiered by such groups as the Brentano String Quartet, eighth blackbird, Nash Ensemble of London, Synergy Vocals, New Millennium Ensemble, MATA Micro-Orchestra, Network for New Music, and many others. Performances have taken place from New York to Los Angeles and from Berlin to Zagreb, with Boston, Chicago, Washington, Minneapolis, Uppsala, Paris, St. Petersburg and many other places in between.

He is also an accomplished jazz pianist and composer and his work has been recognized by ASCAP (the Young Jazz Composer Awards), DownBeat, the Commission Project, and the Jazz Composers Alliance. He has appeared with several prominent jazz musicians, and recently recorded two complete albums of all original jazz compositions with Andrew Rathbun, Jeff Hirshfield, and Scott Lee.

He has been a composer fellow at Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and also received a major fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Macalester College in Minnesota. He holds two degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, and received the M.F.A. and Ph.D. in music from Princeton University.