Michael Kaulkin has over twenty years of experience as a professional composer of works for chorus, orchestra, film and the musical stage. His most recent orchestral work Letter To Hungary for string orchestra was commissioned by the Hungarian Chamber Symphony Orchestra and premiered in Budapest in 2005. The piece was given its U.S. premiere in 2007 by the Mission Chamber Orchestra. American Standard for clarinet and piano is popular with clarinetists around the world and is included on a critically acclaimed CD of American works for clarinet and piano called Time Pieces on the British label Clarinet Classics, released in 2007.
Earlier works include Misterium Tremendum for full orchestra, which was premiered by the Oakland East Bay Symphony in 2003, and Cycle of Friends, for chorus and chamber orchestra with soprano solo, which was commissioned and premiered in 1996 by the Music Group of Philadelphia.
As an undergraduate in Philadelphia, Kaulkin served as Music Director for the Philadelphia Area Repertory Theatre, where he composed incidental music for numerous productions, including a ballet score which was danced by members of the Pennsylvania Ballet. More recently he has been a regular contributor of incidental music to Los Angeles-based Ark Theatre’s productions, and he composed the score for Shakespeare’s Merchant, a 2004 independent film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. He is currently busy with a music-theater-dance piece based on the Robertson Davies play Eros at Breakfast, and in the early planning stages of an opera based on a popular novel of the early 1960’s.
A native of Washington, D.C., Kaulkin earned his Bachelor of Music degree at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied with Joseph Castaldo, and went on to further study at Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary, where he remained for three years, studying composition with János Vajda and choral conducting with István Párkai. After returning from Budapest, he studied composition with Conrad Susa at the San Francisco Conservatory, where he received his Master of Music degree. He is currently offering private lessons in composition and ear training.
Michael Kaulkin lives in San Francisco with his wife, sculptor Georgianna Krieger, and their five-year-old son Philo.
