Born in Coulee Dam, Washington,
in 1951, Philip Carlsen has degrees from the University of
Washington, Brooklyn College, and the CUNY Graduate Center.
His principal composition 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, and a residency at the MacDowell
Colony. In 1989, he was awarded the American Composers
Alliance/Town Hall Commission, which resulted in a piece for
the Manhattan Marimba Quartet, Evening’s
Sabres.
He was the winner of a commission from the National Symphony
Orchestra and the Kennedy Center in connection with the
orchestra's residency in Maine, writing a septet entitled
Maine Traveler's Advisory that was premiered at the Kennedy
Center in November 2000. In the summer of 2003 he was a composition
fellow at the Ernest Bloch Music Festival Composers Symposium in Newport,
Oregon, for which he wrote the quartet Far
Psalteries of Summer.
Works commissioned by Maine ensembles include Suite Mawar Mekar
(2003) for Javanese gamelan and Western
orchestra, written for Bates College, A Dark Pine’s Hand (1997) and Rowing in
Eden
(1992) for Toshi Shimada and the Portland Symphony Orchestra;
The
Garden (2000),
Night Thoughts (1996), and Four
Journeys in Maine (1989) for the chorus and orchestra at
UMF; Songs of Herself (1993) for the Occasional
Chorale; and Penumbra (1987) for the violin,
clarinet, and piano trio of the same name. His Landscape
with Ladyslipper (1997) was commissioned and premiered
by the Sebago/Long Lake Region Chamber Music Festival in
celebration of its 25th anniversary season. The Bossov Ballet
Theatre of Pittsfield, ME, commissioned him in 1998 to write
a two-act ballet, Holly and Ivy, which was produced for two Christmas seasons
at several venues in Maine.
A member of the University of Maine at Farmington faculty
since 1982, Carlsen conducts the UMF Community Orchestra and
teaches a wide range of courses. He received UMF's
Distinguished Faculty Award in 1993, and, for the 1996-97
academic year, the Libra Professorship, an endowed chair
which allowed him to devote half his time to composition. Currently,
he teaches half-time at UMF, and half-time at Bates College, where he
conducts the Bates Orchestra.