Born in England, Carl Rosman studied clarinet in Australia, with Phillip Miechel in Melbourne and with Peter Jenkin in Sydney, graduating with a Masters degree from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. From July–December 2002 he was an artist in residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), returning there for further residencies during 2003. He lives in Cologne.
Carl has performed widely as a soloist, with appearances throughout Europe and Australia as well as in the USA, Argentina, Japan and South Korea. He has performed many major festivals as well as at the 1994 Darmstädter Ferienkurse, where he was awarded a Kranichsteiner Musikpreis. He is a member of ELISION, Ensemble musikFabrik (Cologne) and co-artistic director with Mark Knoop of the libra ensemble. He has also appeared with Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), Ensemble SurPlus (Freiburg), Reservoir (UK), the Melbourne Symphony, Ensemble Offspring, ChamberMade Opera, the Gavin Bryars Ensemble and many other groups.
Carl has also conducted ELISION, musikFabrik, libra ensemble, ascolta (Stuttgart) and many other groups in works by a wide variety of composers from Berg and Boulez to Cage and Ferneyhough. He conducted ELISION at the Studio of the Sydney Opera House in 1999 in a programme including the Australian premiere of Brian Ferneyhough’s La Chute d’Icare, at the 2000 Adelaide Festival in performances of John Rodgers’ Inferno, and at the 2006 Huddersfield Festival in performances of music by Ferneyhough, Lim and Barrett. Recent ELISION recordings with Carl as conductor include portrait CDs of Chris Dench and Aldo Clementi.
Carl has enjoyed close working relationships with a wide range of Australian and international composers including Brian Ferneyhough (whose Time and Motion Study I he has performed on four continents and recorded for ELISION Ensemble release), Michael Finnissy, Chris Dench, Gavin Bryars, James Dillon, Liza Lim, Adam Yee, Richard Barrett and many others. Works composed for him include Chris Dench's ruins within for solo clarinet in A, Liza Lim's INGUZ (fertility) for clarinet in A and cello and Richard Barrett's interference for contrabass clarinet. During 2007-2008 he was also a lecturer in music at Brunel University, London. His articles on works by Liza Lim and Chris Dench have been published by Musik und Ästhetik, and he also writes regularly for International Record Review, Symphony Australia, Universal Music Australia and ABC Classics.