Christian Karlsen

A protégé of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Christian Karlsen is among Scandinavia's most visible and innovative conductors. He is equally recognized for his work in traditional orchestral repertory and in contemporary music. Karlsen was born in 1985 on the Swedish island of Lidingö, near Stockholm. He studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and he has remained active in the Netherlands. Karlsen started his career with a stint as Salonen's assistant. He co-founded the New European Ensemble and remained its artistic director until 2014. From 2015 to 2017, he directed the Dag in de Branding festival in The Hague, offering programs heavily oriented toward contemporary music, including Stockhausen’s opera LICHT, Salvatore Sciarrino’s Studi per l’Intonazione del Mare, and works by Edgar Varèse. In 2018, with David Huang, Karlsen returned to Stockholm to establish a new festival, the Gränslandet - Symfonisk Fest, which is oriented toward young adults. In its first year, it drew an audience of 6,000. Karlsen has been in demand as both a symphonic and an operatic conductor. His guest appearances include those with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra. He has conducted contemporary operas, including Stockhausen's MICHAELs REISE at the Netherlands Opera, Benjamin Staern's Saiyah, and Kaija Saariaho's Nox Borealis, the latter two at Sweden's Norrland Opera. Karlsen is also a frequent guest with contemporary ensembles such as the ICE International Contemporary Ensemble in New York, the Birmingham Contemporary Group, and BIT20 in Bergen, Norway, and he has led world premieres of works by, or otherwise collaborated with, an unusually wide range of the top contemporary composers, including, in addition to Stockhausen, Sofia Gubaidulina, Harrison Birtwistle, and Steve Reich. In 2016, he led a production in the Netherlands of Fausto Romitelli's Professor Bad Trop. In 2021, Karlsen made his recording debut on a BIS release on which he conducted the Norrbotten NEO ensemble in works by Francisco Coll and Pete Harden. ~ James Manheim