Philip Carlsen

Philip Carlsen (b. 1951, Coulee Dam WA) earned degrees in composition from the University of Washington, Brooklyn College, and the CUNY Graduate Center. His principal teachers were Robert Suderburg and Jacob Druckman; he also studied with William Bergsma, Stuart Dempster, Mario Davidovsky, and Charles Dodge. Carlsen has received fellowships from the Maine Arts Commission, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a residency at the MacDowell Colony, and commissions from the American Composers Alliance (for the Manhattan Marimba Quartet), National Symphony Orchestra residency program, the Portland (ME) Symphony Orchestra, Bossov Ballet Theater, Sebago-Long Lakes Region Chamber Music Festival, and other organizations. In addition to numerous performances in Maine, his music has been played at such venues as New York’s Town Hall and the Museum of Modern Art, at the Kennedy Center, national conferences of the College Music Society and the Society of Composers, and the Ernest Bloch Music Festival Composers Symposium. Besides works for traditional Western media, he has written for Javanese gamelan, automobile orchestra, and his own invented instruments. Carlsen is a professor of music at the University of Maine at Farmington, where he has taught since 1982.