Mikael Karlsson

Mikael Karlsson lives in Harlem, New York City. He moved to New York from Sweden in 2000 and graduated summa cum laude with departmental honors with a master’s degree in classical composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music in 2005.

Karlsson’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Lincoln Center, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Paris Opera, Oslo Opera House, Royal Swedish Opera House, Semperoper in Dresden, Ingmar Bergman Center at Fårö, Joyce Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and at new music festivals and opera houses around the world. He has composed for the International Contemporary Ensemble, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, Callie Day, Black Sun Productions, Lydia Lunch, Claire Chase, Joshua Rubin, Mivos Quartet, Sirius Quartet, the Dahlkvist Quartet, Niklas Brommare, Blythe Gaissert, John Kelly, Lennart Mårtensson, Abby Fischer, and pop singers Lykke Li, Anna von Hausswolff, and Mariam Wallentin. His first opera, The Echo Drift, premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival in New York City in 2018.

Karlsson enjoys an ongoing working relationship with celebrated choreographer and director Alexander Ekman. Since they first started working together in 2012, the two have presented nine stage works that include Play (Paris Opera Ballet, 2018), Tyll (Royal Swedish Ballet, 2012; US premiere in 2015 by The Joffrey Ballet), A Swan Lake (Norwegian National Ballet, 2014), Midsummer Night’s Dream (Royal Swedish Ballet, 2015), COW (Dresden Semperoper, 2016), and Rooms (Norwegian National Ballet, 2017). Karlsson composed an electronic version of the “Flocking” section from Ekman’s A Swan Lake for the adventurous fashion designer Henrik Vibskov’s SS15 at Paris Fashion Week and at Copenhagen Fashion Week.

In 2014, Karlsson founded his own production company, Rough State Sound. mikaelk.com.