Darin Tysdal

Darin Tysdal has been a vital force on the Twin Cities musical scene for the past 32 years. During that time he has made his living working in the print music department at Groth Music Company selling sheet music to amateur and professional musicians, schools and churches, and community choirs, bands and orchestras. He has a Bachelors in Music Composition from Moorhead State University, where he studied under Henry Gwiazda, and Paul Koonce. He has a Masters in Music Composition from Northwestern University where he studied under M William Karlins and Michael Pizaro. He is presently working on a piano concerto, a violin concerto, a saxophone sonata, and an opera based on "Tea and Sympathy", the play by Maxwell Anderson. His "Mardi Gras" overture was premiered by the Dakota Valley Symphony. He studied piano at MacPhail School of Music, studying with Gary Sipes and Judy Lin. He has performed concertos with the Dakota Valley Symphony, Metropolitan Symphony, Century Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Freedom Band, Kenwood Symphony, and the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. He also was a soloist with the Heart of Texas Concert Band in San Antonio playing the Festival Concerto by Rudolf Schmidt. He is also keyboardist with many of the community orchestras of the Twin Cities. He is presently assistant music director of Christ the King Lutheran Church in Bloomington, MN. He has recently discovered playing piano with only his left hand when being served communion at church while playing. He has been reviving the lost left-hand repertoire as a result. He has always been a champion of music by unrecognized composers, with a new devotion of composers of color and women composers. He is hoping to perform piano concertos of Copland, Gershwin, Beach, Liebermann, Lyapounov and Ravel in the future. He lives with his wife Lynda and their cats Sunny and Sherry in Bloomington, MN along with their feral cat, Bob, who lives outside and likes to  leave presents for us outside because we are so nice to him.