NEWS

– SEPTEMBER 2024 –
Fall performances

This fall Anne Sofie von Otter will perform the song cycle SO WE WILL VANISH four times with two orchestras. Sep 26 and 27 in Copenhagen with the Danish Radio Orchestra, and Oct 4 and 5 with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducts all four concerts. Text by Royce Vavrek, music by me, and orchestration by Michael P. Atkinson and me.

Mari Carrasco, fresh off a tremendous streak of successes (Remind Me I’m Not Dead, The Heart, Burn Baby Burn) premieres a new piece – FOREVER – on the Rotundan stage at the Royal Swedish Opera, with a premiere on Sep 27. Music by me, featuring recordings of the Swedish Royal Orchestra.

At the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, a new play – LOOK, A MOOSE – by legendary playwright Kristina Lugn, reworked and directed by Mellisa Melouani Melani, and an all-star cast, premieres on October 17. Music by me, featuring strings recorded with New York City’s Sybarite5.

FANNY AND ALEXANDER, the new opera by Royce Vavrek and me (orchestrated with Michael P. Atkinson), premieres on December 1 at the La Monnaie Opera in Brussels. Eleven performances. Conducted by Ariane Matiakh and directed by Ivo van Hove. The cast includes Sasha Cooke (Emilie), Thomas Hampson (Bishop Vergerus), Peter Tantsits (Oscar), Susan Bullock (Helena), Anne Sofie von Otter (Justina), Loa Falkman (Isak), Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen (Ismael), Gavan Ring (Gustav Adolf), Justin Hopkins (Carl) and more to come.

On Dec 7 Alexander Ekman’s PLAY returns to the Paris Opera for a whopping 23 performances. Callie Day returns as the lead vocalist along with most of the original musicians. Music by me.

Info about tickets and links to venues can be found in the calendar to the right of this bit of text.

I hope to see you at one/some of these performances.

– JUNE 2024 –
The 2024 TCO Culture Prize

Every year TCO Sweden (an umbrella organization for several unions) gives a culture prize to someone in the arts who has made a mark in their field. I’m very grateful to be the recipient of the prize in 2024! The motivation from the jury finishes with”Mikael Karlsson, with his many musical faces, is a composer who doesn’t just break boundaries – he blows them up and creates new worlds.”
TCO announcement

– FEBRUARY 2024 –
The OPUS magazine list of notable achievements in classical music in 2023

Thank you Opus (Scandinavia’s biggest magazine about classical music and opera) for including me on this list of composers, performers, organisations or ensembles who made a mark in the field in 2023.

“To the unified applause of critics Mikael Karlsson transformed Lars von Trier’s dystopian film “Melancholia” (2011) into an opera at The Royal Swedish Opera this fall.

The next adaptation of a film is “Fanny and Alexander” which premieres in Brussels 2024, again with his wingman Royce Vavrek as librettist. According to many, the Halland-born Harlem-resident is to be considered one of today’s greatest avant-gardists in opera. Karlsson collaborates equally comfortably with the Paris Opera and soul artist Alicia Keys, as unpretentiously with Carnegie Hall as with pop star Lykke Li. Karlsson has also composed music for the video games Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2 and, according to DN (leading Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter), ‘embodies the image of a composer of the future’. We can only agree”

Happy to be in the company of such lovely colleagues, and I’m of course especially happy to see Ola Eliasson (who performed the role of John in Melancholia) also on the list.

It goes without saying that opera is a team sport, so I send an extra thank you to the hundreds of people who built Melancholia with us.

– JANUARY 2024 –
From Melancholia to Fanny and Alexander to Alexander Ekman

After a completely sold out run at the Royal Swedish Opera, a phenomenal reception from the press and the audience (much younger than usual, and many many newcomers), I am back in NYC listening through the recorded sound from the show that will go with the tv broadcast of the show, directed by Andreas Morell for EuroArts Music. The show will reach a myriad of tv networks in 2024.

Melancholia now has its own page on the website, under WORKS/OPERA.

My work now turns to Fanny and Alexander for the La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels. Once again, Royce Vavrek is the librettist, writing the opera with me, and this time around legendary director Ivo van Hove and his team joins us. As always, Michael P. Atkinson is orchestrating with me. We premiere Fanny and Alexander in December 2024.

2024 will se the returns of many of Alexander Ekman’s pieces for which I have written the music. Midsummer Night’s Dream will return with the Joffrey Ballet, with the Royal Swedish Ballet and with the Dortmund Ballet this coming spring.

INSTA
You can find me on Instagram under the handle @mika_karlsson 😉 That’s also the easiest way to reach me (DM), as junk mail filters are a bit rough with my webpage contact form emails and things get lost. Working on a better contact form system.

View past news

View full calendar

View past events

NYTimes about The Echo Drift

“Directed by Mallory Catlett and conducted by Nicholas DeMaison in its world premiere at the Prototype Festival, the production puts music, by Mikael Karlsson, on an equal footing with design, seeking multidimensionality on both fronts. Stark and intricate, propulsive and a little film-noir, “The Echo Drift” is most exciting when it is fast and cacophonous, nearly overwhelming the senses.”

Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times (The Echo Drift, PROTOTYPE Festival 2018, Baruch Performing Arts Center)

Observer about The Echo Drift

“Everything about this presentation was virtuoso, from the psychedelic snarls and slithers in composer Mikael Karlsson’s orchestra writing to the sly, ironic whispers of actor John Kelly as the Moth. But the heart of the piece was the bravura singing of Blythe Gaissert as the panicky prisoner, her smoky mezzo biting into the wide-ranging and relentless vocal part with the violent abandon of a starving shark.“

James Jorden, Observer (The Echo Drift, PROTOTYPE Festival 2018, Baruch Performing Arts Center)

Trespassing review by Dagens Nyheter

“Mikael Karlsson embodies the composer of the future“

Johanna Paulsson, Dagens Nyheter (Trespassing, Orionteatern, Stockholm, Sweden 2019)

AAoAAL

“Mikael Karlsson, born in Sweden, composes highly evocative music that sparkles, dances and sings. From powerful solo works such as Nasty Fucker, for Claire Chase, to full evening ballet, A Swan Lake for the Norwegian National Ballet, he captures the listener’s attention in every magical moment he creates. Always surprising, enchanting and forward looking in invention, his music resembles no other. Karlsson is a composer in great demand!”

– American Academy of Arts and Letters (citation: Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award in Music for an exceptional mid-career composer)

Dance Europe

“With so much happening on the stage it would have been easy for the music to get lost. Mikael Karlsson’s brilliant score, however, meant there was no chance of that. Act I was a wonderful orchestral remix of the greatest hits from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake – the tunes were easily identifiable but tempi were changed, melodies chopped up and moods subtly distorted. In Act II Karlsson’s entirely original music was at first darkly cinematic before skipping into an off-kilter vaudevillian feel and then concluding with a beautifully elegiac piece that echoed Tchaikovsky’s famous white swan theme.”

– Gerard Davis, Dance Europe (review: Alexander Ekman’s full evening ballet “A Swan Lake” at the Norwegian National Ballet

Blanc Ilona Landgraf

“Mikael Karlsson, commissioned with additional composition, contributed darker music with a real edge.” … “As usual, what rose from the pit aroused true pleasure.”

Ilona Landgraf, “Landgraf on Dance”, Review of Daniel Proietto’s “Blanc” at the Vienna State Opera, premiered Nov 1 2016

Tulle review Chicago Sun Times

“…a terrific manipulated score by Mikael Karlsson…”

– Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times (review: Joffrey Ballet US premiere of Alexander Ekman’s “Tulle”

Tulle review 4dancers.org

“The marvelous soundtrack by Mikael Karlsson is varied, and includes counting, heavy breathing, stomping and more fun/funny sounds punctuating a variety of “scenes” throughout the piece.”

– Catherine L. Tully, 4dancers.org (review: Joffrey Ballet’s US premiere of Alexander Ekman’s “Tulle”

Midsummer Night’s Dream, review - Dansportalen

“Mikael Karlsson’s music is a gift to dance: it is incantatory, melodic and always engaging. He mixes electronic and instrumental sounds with folk melodies in a seamless flow.”
“Mikael Karlsson, Ekman’s longtime collaborator, has delivered a score worthy of big dreams”

– Maggie Foyer, Dansportalen (Scandinavia’s largest website for dance) (review: Alexander Ekman’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Royal Swedish Ballet – world premiere April 17 2015)

Midsummer Night’s Dream review - Per Sinding-Larsen

“One of the best things I have ever seen. Thank you Mikael Karlsson for the best possible music, Anna Von Hausswolff for incredible singing and Alexander Ekman for unbeatable choreography and stage design. Thank you all incredible dancers and musicians, and thank you to the Royal Swedish Opera for presenting this show.”

Per Sinding-Larsen (leading Swedish music journalist, Instagram – Alexander Ekman’s Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Midsummer Night’s Dream review - Jan Gradvall

“Regardless of what your interests may be, drop everything and go see Midsummer Night’s Dream. I have attended concerts and art performances all over the world for 35 years and this is one of the biggest stage performance experiences of my life, on par with Kraftwerk at Solnahallen and Robert Wilson’s ‘A Dream Play’. Anna von Hausswolf is the show’s singer. Wonderful music by Mikael Karlsson who at times reminds me of David Sylvian and Michael Nyman. Mind-blowing choreography and stage design by Alexander Ekman, featuring, among other things, many tons of hay on stage.”

Jan Gradvall (Leading Swedish music journalist) Instagram – Alexander Ekman’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Royal Swedish Ballet, world premiere April 17 2015)

Cow review, Bachtrack

“Mikael Karlsson’s original score peaked the senses and ran a whole gamut of expression, even bringing sustained energy and humor to the choir of distorted “moos”. My only reservation about the music was that there wasn’t more of it; some segments had only the barest of accompaniment. The Steve Reich influence and Romantic quotations were palpable, but even more pervasive were the stardust and muscular beats of Karlsson’s own personal hand.”

Sarah Bachelet, Backtrack – Alexander Ekman’s COW, Semperoper Ballet, world premiere March 13 2016

ÖP reviews Black Forest

“The wonderful music by Mikael Karlsson makes sure to engage one’s imagination and inner rhythm. The audience members bobbed their heads to a rhythmic percussion section.”

Martin Johansson, Östersundsposten, “Black Forest” by Mari Carrasco, April 14 2016

Rooms - Seeing dance, Maggie Foyer

“Mikael Karlsson’s music links it all together in a magical web of sounds played by strings on a platform in front and a posse of pianos in the rear and in between, there we are, a crowd of bewitched and bewildered punters, who have been allowed into the playground to wander round and gawp.”

Maggie Foyer, seeingdance.com (Rooms, Alexander Ekman, Norwegian National Ballet, Oslo Opera)

Play review by Chronik

“The music, composed by Mikael Karlsson, is essential in this ballet. It is a superb saxophone quartet (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone) that enters the stage, the first, to introduce the dance.

It is then an orchestra and a gospel singer overhanging the stage, as on the mezzanine of a loft, for the two hours of the show. It is always nice, in a contemporary ballet, to enjoy live music.

Square and cubic or round like a balloon, such is the dance of Ekman, like the music of Karlsson which alternates sequences of percussions and strolls on the piano, but also long tutti in legato with the strings and the winds. An echo of choreographies and sets, more than a synesthesia.”

Marie-Cecile Naves, chronic.fr (Play, Alexander Ekman, Paris Opera Ballet, Paris Opera)

Background video by Niklas Alexandersson.