Mikael Karlsson

Mikael Karlsson (Johan Mikael Karlsson; born August 12, 1975, in Halmstad, Sweden) is a Swedish composer based in New York City. He grew up in Gävle, Sweden and moved to NYC in 2001 to study and he took a master's degree in classical composition at the Aaron Copland School of Music 2005.

Before the move, he had come to know Stefan Strandberg, who became the audio designer of the video game developer Digital Illusions CE which led to a request to make the music to Battlefield: Bad Company released in 2008. He also wrote the music for Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Mikael Karlsson has collaborated with the choreographer Alexander Ekman on several occasions. He has, among other things, written music for Ekman's ballets and sets of Tyll and Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Sweden and Swan Lake on the Oslo Opera in Oslo, Norway. They became good friends when Ekman's sister moved into the apartment that Karlsson inhabited in NYC.

Mikael Karlsson has, in addition to classic sets, also made music for film and TV and collaborated with pop artists such as Andreas Kleerup, Lykke Li and Alicia Keys.

In 2014, he was praised by the American Academy of Arts and Letters when he received the Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award as "outstanding composer in the middle of his career".

In 2023, Karlsson's opera Melancholia, after the film of the same name by Lars von Trier, was premiered by the Royal Swedish Opera.

In December 2024, his opera with librettist Royce Vevrek “Fanny and Alexander” based on Ingmar Bergman’s film, premiered at the Brussels Royal Opera house La Monnaie.

Read more about this composer on Wikipedia.