Walking through the campus, Mikael stops suddenly. It’s effing cold. Why!?
He’s pointing in a direction. At his fingertips, afar, Manhattan’s tall buildings are hiding part of the sky. “Isn’t it beautiful?”, he asks. I nod. “The whole school was standing right here on 9/11, looking at the towers.” I can only imagine the show.
Mikael Karlsson is the music composer for the Battlefield: Bad Company games.
Last month he took me to visit the school he teaches at.
Getting to Queens College, where the Aaron Copland School of Music is, from New York City takes some time, an hour at least. Mikael isn’t teaching today, he came for me. We met two weeks before and I told him I’d like to see where he works his gaming music. “School’s the best”, he said.
As we were done walking down the architectural wonder that is Queens College’s campus and got to our building, I started taking pictures.
The concert hall, filled by Mozart's Requiem
Mikael played the piano for me in an empty classroom. I felt important
Talking to a student of his
Mikael is Swedish, by the way
Classy
Important people, most likely
Mikael sat at this very piano to compose the music for the 1st Bad Company game
I like signs
Pages of the Bad Company 2 score, from the track...
...The World of the Snowy Mountains! (did you click "play" at the top?)
Thanks Mikael for the visit!
I’ll be running an online interview of Mikael Karlsson on Tuesday May 4th. If you have questions you’d like to ask him, why don’t you join us and ask yourself? :)
I’ll have a dedicated post on that tomorrow.