Mikael Karlsson was born in Halmstad, Sweden in 1975.
In 2000 he moved to New York City to pursue an academic path in classical composition and has since studied classical piano with concert pianist and recording artist Donald Pirone.
He holds a masters degree in composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music and graduated Summa Cum Laude with departmental honors in June of 2005.
He has studied composition with Dr. Edward Smaldone (2001-2002), Bruce Saylor (2002-2005) and Jeff Nichols (2004). Many of his pieces have been performed in New York, and his music is on the soundtrack of films by acclaimed experimental film makers Barbara Hammer (History Lessons, 2001 - an Official Sundance Selection that year) and Christopher Young (Orpheus and Eurydice 2001 - released by Please Records as a separate soundtrack cd). Mikael is the assistant to composer Tobias Picker.
Mikael is the recipient of the Verdandi Cultural Achievement award (1996), The Aaron Copland School of Music Award to and Outstanding Student (twice - 2001, 2002), The Gabriel Fontrier Award in Composition (three times - 2001, 2002 and 2004), The Anna Whitlock Culture Award (2002), The Karol Rathaus Memorial Award (the Faculty’s finest award at the Aaron Copland School of Music) in Composition (2003, 2005) and the Mark Kyrkostas Award in Composition (2003). In 2003, he was selected to become a member of the national honor society Phi Beta Kappa. In 2005 he received the Jack Barham Creativity Prize.
Mikael is an adjunct professor of music theory, sight-singing and dictation at the Aaron Copland School of Music in New York. Privately, he teaches piano, composition, music theory, analysis, dictation, sight-singing, music software and music history.
Mikael is currently finishing a cd of sound collages and wicked games with artist/composer Rob Stephenson.
Mikael is a founding member of Please MusicWorks and makes a damn good bouillabaisse.
His homepage is www.mikaelkarlsson.info
License: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
In Case of Brahms
(solo piano, pianist: Cory Smythe)
In Case of Brahms - movment 1
In Case of Brahms - movment 2
In Case of Brahms - movment 3
Land
(clarinet and two pianos, cl: Joshua Rubin, pno1: Cory Smythe, pno2: Jacob Greenberg)
Land