A recipient of fellowships or commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, Maine Arts Commission, National Institute of Arts and Letters, and American Composers Alliance, composer PHILIP CARLSEN has had performances by the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Manhattan Marimba Quartet, Verdehr Trio, National Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players, Transient Canvas, Sebago-Long Lakes Region Chamber Music Festival, Bates College gamelan, Bossov Ballet Theatre, and many others.

Since retirement in 2015 to South Portland, Maine, he has continued adding to his eclectic catalog of compositions—numerous pieces featuring marimba, a chart for jazz big band, choral settings of poetry by his wife Jeri Theriault, experiments with other Maine musicians and artists in free improv and conceptual art, etc. Phil directed the Back Cove Contemporary Music Festival for several years at the Portland Conservatory of Music, including a concert of music by nine composers for eight pianos in eight separate rooms, one of which was his own Dem ESCHART von Brunswick gewidmet.

He taught music for 33 years at the University of Maine at Farmington, where his numerous pieces for students and the community included collaborations with poets Wesley McNair and Lee Sharkey; songs and incidental music for productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, and other plays; and five annual extravaganzas for automobile orchestra.

Phil’s activities exemplify the interests that have compelled him throughout his career: the social, theatrical, and communicative aspects of live performance, the intersections of words and music, experimentalism, non-Western music, jazz, acoustics, and a fascination with the subtle balance between music’s architecture and its emotional expression.

He is also active as a cellist, playing in the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra, the Buttonwood Piano Trio, and, on baroque cello, with the professional early-music group St. Mary Schola. Here’s Phil with Jeri and his frequent collaborator, bass flutist Carl Dimow, as they prepare for the launch-with-improvised-music of Jeri’s new poetry collection in July 2023.

CONTACT: carlsen@maine.edu