Music

Musician Tyler Kaiser is a Duluth, Minnesota native who is active in this region as a composer, performer and educator. As your friendly neighborhood composer he has earned national recognition with numerous awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and numerous grants, fellowships and commissions. Notable among these are a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the Continental Harmony project, two McKnight/ARAC fellowships and commissions from the American Composers Forum, the American Recorder Society, Arts Midwest/Meet the Composer, Matinee Musicale, the College of St. Scholastica, and the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra. He is also one of the composers in residence with the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra. His compositions cover the gamut in form and style including comic operas, symphonies and works for instruments as diverse as your commission may require (bagpipes, accordion and banjo may cost extra). Besides performances in this area, Kaiser’s works have premiered in England, Denmark and Germany. Some of his compositions are published by Wolfhead Music in the U.S. and Edition Corvus in Germany.

As a performer he is involved with many of this regions best musical talent. As a guitarist he has been concerto soloist with the LSCO and the ISO. His guitar arrangement of his own “Cotton Cantata” was used as the soundtrack for a documentary of the NEA/ACF funded Continental Harmony project. He also performs on occasion with Colder by the Lake Comedy Troupe, the Arrowhead Chorale, the North Shore Big Band and the Minnesota Lute Quartet. As a horn player he performs with the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra, and the Center for Early Music Orchestra. He is also a former member of the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra. He has studied guitar with Daniel K. Sturm, Peter Segal, Toyohiko Satoh and Hopkinson Smith. He has studied horn with Miles “Mighty” Johnson. He has studied composition with Daniel K. Sturm. He has a B.A. in guitar performance & composition from the College of St. Scholastica (from which he graduated summa cum laude).

He lives up the shore with his lovely wife Beth and several cats.