Bio

Michael Kaulkin (he/him) is active as a composer and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. His choral, orchestral and chamber works have been performed around the world, and his music has been described as “exceptionally beautiful on all counts.”

Popular among Kaulkin’s choral works are the Yiddish folksong arrangement Tumbalalayka, which is included on French vocal quartet Æsthesis’ 2022 album O Do Not Move, and The Noble Art of Music, a 2-minute choral fanfare among the pieces composed for San Francisco Choral Artists while serving as their Composer-in-Residence in 2017-18. He is the 2020-21 winner of the Organization of American Kodály Educators’ (OAKE) Ruth Boshkoff Composition Prize, resulting in the commission of Redbirds for children’s choir, which premiered by an honor choir at OAKE’s 2022 national conference. It is now published by Colla Voce Music. Larger-scale choral works include  Cycle of Friends for soprano solo, SATB chorus and chamber orchestra, and Most This Amazing, for SATB chorus, two pianos and percussion. He has served on adjudication panels for American Composers Forum Subito grants, San Francisco Conservatory choral and art song composition competitions, and the Béla Bartók International Choral Competition in Debrecen, Hungary.

Chamber works available from Universal Edition include Zwei Hülshoff Lieder, for soprano, clarinet, viola and piano, American Standard for clarinet and piano, and String Quartet No. 1 (“City Walks”), which was a finalist for The American Prize in 2015.  By Hook or by Crook (2020), for horn quartet, was the 1st Place winner of the Quadre 2020 International Composition Competition.

Kaulkin’s orchestra piece Misterium Tremendum won the San Francisco Conservatory’s annual Highsmith Prize in 2000 and was later performed by the Oakland East Bay Symphony.  Letter to Hungary, for string orchestra was premiered by the Hungarian Chamber Symphony Orchestra in 2005.

A composer with deep ties to the theater, Kaulkin has collaborated with the Philadelphia Area Repertory Theatre, ARK Theater in Los Angeles, and the San Jose Children’s Musical Theater, among others. He also composed the score for the independent film Shakespeare’s Merchant. More recently, a prototype scene from his proposed opera Lilith  was included in West Edge Opera‘s 2022 SNAPSHOT program showcasing new works in progress.

Kaulkin is on the Musicianship and Composition faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory Pre-College Division. An avid adopter and adapter of the Kodály Method in teaching Musicianship, he has also served on the faculties of summer Kodály programs at Holy Names University and Portland State University. His innovative online musicianship teaching resources and services are available through his website Turn On Your Ears, and he teaches private composition lessons.

A native of Washington, D.C., Kaulkin studied composition with Joseph Castaldo at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, followed by 3 years’ post-graduate study at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary, under the tutelage of composer János Vajda and choral conductor István Párkai. He earned his Master of Music degree at the San Francisco Conservatory, where he studied composition with Conrad Susa.