Mikael Karlsson Bio
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“Mikael Karlsson is a shining star of his generation. With an impressive catalog of works for the stage and concert hall, his music reveals a composer of astonishing imagination and emotional power.” — American Academy of Arts and Letters
“Mikael Karlsson embodies the composer of the future.” (Dagens Nyheter, Johanna Paulsson).
“Mikael Karlsson is to be considered one of today’s greatest avant-gardists in opera” OPUS magazine
Mikael is a composer who specializes in dramatic music for dance, ballet, opera, theater and for singers. He also writes concert music for orchestras, chamber ensembles and solo instrumentalists. His work often combines acoustic orchestras and ensembles with live electronics in multichannel surround sound. His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center, MuTh Konzertsaal, Berwaldhallen, MoMA, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Paris Opera Palais Garnier, Oslo Opera House, the Royal Swedish Opera, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, at the Nobel Prize Banquet, the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, the Edinburgh International Festival and the Baltic Sea Festival, and many other opera houses, festivals and concert venues across Europe, Asia and the US.
Since 2010, Mikael has written the music for most of choreographer Alexander Ekman’s ballets, dance works and installations. Their full-evening pieces include Play, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Escapist, Hammer, A Swan Lake, Cow, Frailty of Man. Their shorter works include Tyll, Resin, Left Right Left Right, and Tuplet. All of their full-evening pieces are frequently performed across the world and are regularly broadcast on major TV networks. Play has had three runs at the Palais Garnier, in 2017, 2021 and 2024–25, followed by a Japan tour in 2025.
Midsummer Night’s Dream has returned to the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm and toured to Umeå, entered the repertoires of The Joffrey Ballet and Ballett Dortmund, and travelled to Barcelona, Salzburg and Berkeley. The Joffrey’s production premiered in 2018, returned in Chicago in 2024 and visited Cal Performances in April 2026. Hammer returned to GöteborgsOperans Danskompani in 2025, including the Göteborg Opera Dance Festival; A Swan Lake returned to the Norwegian National Ballet in 2022, and Escapist to the Royal Swedish Ballet the same year.
Mikael has composed two grand operas with long-term collaborator and librettist Royce Vavrek. The first, Melancholia – an adaptation of the Lars von Trier film – was commissioned by the Royal Swedish Opera and premiered in 2023, directed by Slava Daubnerová, conducted by Andrea Molino, with a cast that included Lauren Snouffer, Rihab Chaieb and Anne Sofie von Otter. The opera was recorded by EuroArts and has been broadcast on Arté, Medici TV, Mezzo TV and SVT. The opera sold out its premiere run and was dubbed “The coolest opera in a long time […] visually rich, beautiful and musically exciting” by newspaper Expressen, and Sweden’s leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter wrote “Composer Mikael Karlsson’s and librettist Royce Vavrek’s full-evening opera is the crowning achievement of the Royal Swedish Opera’s 250 year anniversary celebration.”
Their second grand opera, Fanny and Alexander, was adapted from the Ingmar Bergman film. It was commissioned by Opera La Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels. The world premiere production was directed by Ivo van Hove, and conducted by Ariane Matiakh, with a cast that includes Thomas Hampson, Anne Sofie von Otter, Sasha Cooke, Peter Tantsits, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Loa Falkman and Susan Bullock. Fanny and Alexander premiered December 1, 2024. Both operas were orchestrated with Michael P. Atkinson. De Standaard named Fanny and Alexander the best stage work of 2024. Die Welt praised the production as a successful Gesamtkunstwerk, and Oper Magazine highlighted the music’s vivid characterization of its cast and individual scenes.
Their work in dance includes Crypto with choreographer Guillaume Coté, and Evidence of it All with choreographer Drew Jacoby, with a vocal performance by actress Rosamund Pike.
Mikael’s first opera, The Echo Drift, with a libretto by Elle Kunnos de Voss and Kathryn Walat, premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival in NYC in 2018. Mallory Catlett directed the opera. Mallory and Mikael are currently working on a new chamber opera, Barcelona – Map of Shadows, adapted from the play by Lluïsa Cunillé. Excerpts were presented in New York in March 2026, with the full production announced for NYU Skirball in fall 2027.
Mikael has written music for choreographer Mari Carrasco’s dance pieces Little Concert, Forever, Remind Me I’m Not Dead, The Heart, Burn Baby Burn, Paper Plane, Black Forest and Internally Black; for choreographers Morgann Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright’s Coppelia (with Michael P. Atkinson), Hotel, and Averno; for choreographer Daniel Proietto’s Rasa, Player and Blanc; for choreographer Helen Pickett’s To Be One and IN Cognito; for Hervé Koubi’s Sol Invictus; and five full-evening pieces with choreographer Benoit-Swan Pouffer for Cedar Lake Ballet in NYC.
Anne Sofie von Otter and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra commissioned the song cycle So We Will Vanish from Royce and Mikael in 2021. The piece received rave reviews and has also been performed by Anne Sofie with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, with conductors including Pekka Kuusisto, Ariane Matiakh and Jukka-Pekka Saraste. A recording is in preparation. Anne Sofie is among the premiere cast of both Melancholia and Fanny and Alexander.
Anna von Hausswolff and Mikael composed the music for the Nobel Prize Banquet 2018. The three pieces were performed by Anna, the Royal Swedish Orchestra and members of the Royal Opera Chorus conducted by James Grossmith, with Mikael on piano and pipe organ. Their Grand Guignol, for orchestra, choir, voice and live electronics in surround sound, premiered at the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm in 2025 with Anna as vocal soloist, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Choir, conducted by Christoph Koncz.
Since 2014, Mikael has collaborated closely with orchestrator, composer, conductor and French hornist Michael P. Atkinson, who either handles or shares orchestration duties for all of Mikael’s pieces with an orchestra. For the Scottish Ballet’s new version of Coppelia (with choreographers Morgann Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright), the two composed the score together. The show became a breakout hit of the 2022 Edinburgh International Festival and traveled to Sadler’s Wells in London. Michael has also conducted numerous recordings of Mikael’s music.
Mikael and Michael P. Atkinson also co-composed the score for Scottish Ballet’s Mary, Queen of Scots, choreographed by Sophie Laplane and directed by James Bonas, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2025 and also travelled to Sadler’s Wells in London. In 2026, Mikael composed Arena for Morgann Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright at the Paris Opera Ballet.
Mikael has written music for the International Contemporary Ensemble, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Mivos Quartet, Sirius Quartet, the Dahlkvist Quartet, Sybarite5, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, New Thread Quartet, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, The Royal Swedish Orchestra, the Oslo Opera House Orchestra, and the Vienna Opera Orchestra. He has supplied music for fashion shows by J. Anderson / Loewe, Henrik Vibskov and Alain Paul Studio, and written film music for Bruce LaBruce, Barbara Hammer and Johnny Taranto. He and his team also composed music for Electronic Arts / DICE’s video games Battlefield: Bad Company and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
He has collaborated with performers Callie Day, Rosamund Pike, Black Sun Productions, Siri Karlsson (Cecilia Österholm, Maria Arnqvist), Lydia Lunch, Claire Chase, Joshua Rubin, Raehann Bryce-Davis, Niklas Brommare, Blythe Gaissert, Amelia Watkins, Lauren Worsham, Eve Gigliotti, Isabel Leonard, John Kelly, Abby Fischer and pop singers Lykke Li, Anna von Hausswolff and Mariam Wallentin.
Mikael has released over twenty albums with works for orchestra, chamber works and soundtracks ranging from pop and film music to sound collages, dance scores and avant-garde concert music.
Recent releases include Hammer (2025) and Crypto (2022). His work for the theater includes Titta en älg (2024), directed by Mellika Melouani Melani at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, and Romeo & Julia (2023), directed by Gustav Deinoff for Unga Klara and Helsingborgs stadsteater.
In 2007, Mikael was included in Out Magazine’s Out 100 list of influential people. The score to his piece Nasty Fucker was published in Butt Magazine. In 2012, NYC Public Radio’s listeners voted him as one of their 100 favorite classical composers under 40. In 2016, he was one of the hosts of the prestigious radio show “Sommar i P1” on Swedish National Radio. In 2023 he was listed third on OPUS magazine’s year end list of that year’s prominent people in classical music.
In 2025 he received the Otto and Catherine Brunson Luening Award, “for a composer due wide recognition,” from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2014 he received the Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond award “for an exceptional mid-career composer” from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2021 Alexander Ekman and Mikael were jointly awarded the Falstaff Prize for their work together over the past 10 years. In 2023 Alexander Ekman and Mikael received the EBU–IMZ Outstanding Achievement Award at Golden Prague for their contributions to the performing arts on television. In 2024, Mikael received the TCO culture prize. In 2025, he was a Civitella Ranieri Fellow.
The filmed Royal Swedish Opera production of Melancholia, directed for television by Andreas Morell, received the Golden Prague Special Mention for Extraordinary Artistic Achievement in 2024.
Mikael Karlsson lives in Stockholm. 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. His teachers include Bruce Saylor, Edward Smaldone, Steven Osgood and Tobias Picker. He returned to Sweden in 2026.
In 2014 Mikael founded his own production company, publishing company and record label, Rough State Sound.
