Carl Wittrock was born in Goor (in the Dutch province of Overijssel) in 1966.

His musical career started off at the Goor School of Music, where he studied the violin and the clarinet. He went on to attend the Conservatory in Enschede, graduating in Music Education (1990), Orchestral Conducting UM (1993) with Tajiro Iimori. He took both, national and international conducting courses with Jan Cober, Eugene Corporon, Arie van Beek and Gert Buitenhuis, among others. He has tbeen conducting various orchestras since 1984 and also teaches music at Twickel College secondary school in Hengelo. He is currently the conductor of Apollo Goor Community Band and Twente's Youth Symphony Orchestra, with whom he won the national competition for youth symphony orchestras in June, 2013. He was guest conductor for Orchestras in Belgium, Ukraine, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Lithuania and Bulgaria, among other countries.

He began creatin compositions for wind bands in 1985. In 1989, his work 'Antarctica' drew the attention of music publishers, and titles such as 'Lord Tullamore', 'The Legend of Flathead Lake' and 'Trimbeka' found their way to bands in the Netherlands and abroad. Many composition commissions followed, such as for the Dutch Brass Band Competition, the Johan Willem Friso Royal Military Band, the 70th anniversary of the city of Arnhem's liberation, the Bernischer Kantonal-Musikverband and the Dutch Institute for Wind Music. In 2013, Wittrock was charged with the honourable task of creating a composition to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 2014, Carl Wittrock was knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau.

In 2014, hes was awarded Overijssel province's cultural award, and in 2015, the Buma Brass Award.