Darin Tysdal has been a vital force in the music community of the Twin Cities area for more than 20 years. He has been active as a pianist, composer and conductor. He has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Music Composition from Moorhead State University and Northwestern University. Darin continued piano study at MacPhail Center for Music with Gary Sipes and Judy Lin. After twice winning the MacPhail Concerto Competition (Franck Symphonic Variations with Manny Laureano conducting, and Gershwin Concerto in F with Cary John Franklin conducting), he has been assistant choral director at Christ The King Lutheran Church in Bloomington as long as he can remember.
As a member of the Metropolitan Symphony for 20 years, he has won their concerto competition three times (Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand, Dohnanyi Variations on a Nursery Tune, and Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 4). Other soloist opportunities have been with the Kenwood Symphony (Rimsky-Korsakov Piano Concerto), Dakota Valley Symphony (Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue, Gottschalk Grand Tarantelle ,and Addinsell Warsaw Concerto), as well as the Grand Symphonic Winds, the Minnesota Freedom Band, plus an appearance with the Heart of Texas Concert Band conducted by Mark Rogers in the world premiere of the Festival Concerto by Rudolph Schmidt which is on YouTube.
He has participated in many amateur piano competitions in the USA, including the cities of New York, Chicago and Boston. He has twice competed in the Van Cliburn Amateur Piano Competition, winning a spot in the semi-finals and an award for Most Original Programming.
One of Darin’s passions is the advocacy and performance of little-known as well as forgotten music from the past as well as the present. Another interest of his is film music, of which he is a aficionado. He has lobbied for John Waxman (son of Franz Waxman) to have an arrangement done of Franz Waxman’s The Ride of the Cossack from Taras Bulba as a virtuoso piano transcription, for his use. Darin has also been written a lengthy solo for piano in the third movement of the new symphony by Polina Nazanskaya which was premiered by the Metropolitan Symphony in 2017. In his spare time, Darin works for Groth Music in Bloomington, and lives not too far away from the store, with his wife Lynda, a writer, and their cats Sunny and Sherry.
