Karsten Fundal is widely acknowledged for working within many styles, genres and instrumental combinations, always with an unmistakable personal sound and quality and curious to break new ground.

Fundal has studied composition with Hans Abrahamsen and Ib Nørholm, Karl Aage Rasmussen and Per Nørgård. A meeting with Nigel Osborne and (especially) Morton Feldman in 1986 at Dartington influenced his development as a composer, and in the years 1987-88 he studied composition with Louis Andriessen in The Netherlands.

In 2006 he won a Robert Award for Best Music for The Art of Crying by Peter Schønau Fog. In 2007 Fundal completed the work on the music for the epic film Flammen & Citronen (Flame and Citron) directed by Ole Christian Madsen. Since then he has composed music for numerous films, like the Finnish documentary Canned Dreams by Katja Gauriloff, (Jussi Award 2013), the Danish feature Excuse me by Henrik Ruben-Genz, Danny’s Doomsday by Martin Barnewitz and the documentary The Act Of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer, which was Oscar nominated as well as winning a BAFTA in 2014, a European Film Award in 2013 and about 30 other major prizes. The 3D documentary Halden, Michael Madsen’s contribution to the Wim Wenders and Neue Road Movies coproduction Cathedrals of Culture, set to music by Karsten Fundal, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival 2014. Further film scores include the music to The Visit by Michael Madsen, which premiered at Sundance in 2014 (where Fundal was Composer in Spotlight), Bridgend by Jeppe Rønde, which had its world premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival and received three awards at Tribeca Film Festival and Fúsi (Virgin Mountain) by Dagur Kári, which premiered at Berlin International Film Festival, won the top prize at Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded the Nordic Council Film Prize 2015.

Furthermore, Karsten Fundal wrote the scores for The Shadow World by Johan Grimonprez (awarded with the Ensor for Best Documentary 2017) and Andrei Nekrasov’s The Magnitsky Act - Behind the Scenes, and set Lise Birk Pedersen's latest documentary Al magt til folket? to music. Feras Fayyad's documentary Last Men in Aleppo was awarded the Grand Jury Prize: World Cinema Documentary at Sundance 2017, the DOX:AWARD at CPH:DOX Festival 2017, the Robert Award 2018 and the Documentary Emmy Award 2018. Furthermore, it received nominations for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature as well as for the Carl Prisen 2018 for Best Score. Fundal also scored Human Flow by Chinese artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei, with a premiere in the Competition Programme at Venice Film Festival, nominated for the Carl Prisen 2018 for Best Score and shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Film and Best Score. In March 2019, Doris Dörrie's film Kirschblüten & Dämonen was released in German cinemas and two films with music by Karsten Fundal were premiered at CPH:DOX - Ai Weiwei's documentary The Rest as well as Sun Hee Engeltoft's Forget Me Not.

Fundal has written numerous orchestral and chamber works for all major symphony orchestras and ensembles in Denmark as well as chamber and orchestral works for several major soloists and music for dance. Fundals large orchestral work Liquid Rooms was premiered in fall 2014 and his chamber opera Concert for Lou with a libretto by Suzanne Brøgger had its premiere in early 2017. Fundal has extensively collaborated with orchestras and various Indie projects such as Efterklang, Choir of Young Believers, Oh Land, and especially the sample-based producer and composer duo Den Sorte Skole. Karsten Fundal's opera project with Efterklang, Leaves – The Colour of Falling was premiered with great success at Copenhagen Opera Festival in August 2015, received the Carl Prisen 2016 and was nominated for the prestigious Reumert Award in the category Opera of the Year.

Karsten Fundal’s latest opera work, Incognito Royal, directed by Philipp Kochheim, was premiered at Musikhuset Aarhus in 2021.