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Photo: Anastasiya Ram

Kirsten Milenko (b.1993) is an Australian composer, conductor and orchestrator based in Paris. Her music expresses acoustic and electronic settings of an immersive and beautifully strange nature grounded on spectral practices.

Milenko studied composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she was awarded the 2016 Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize for excellence. She completed the Sorrell Conductors Program with Sian Edwards at the Royal Academy of Music and studies contemporary repertoire conducting with Arturo Tamayo at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana. In 2022, she will begin the Cursus Program at IRCAM.

In 2019, she was awarded the Roche Young Commission by Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival Wolfgang Rihm. In 2020, her debut opera/dance-theatre work Dalloway premiered at Pulsar Festival in Copenhagen. She was shortlisted to create a new opera for the Mannheim National Theatre the same year with librettist Bea Redweik and director Johan Klint Sandberg. Milenko was an artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts from autumn-20 to spring-21. She was one of the 67 Australian composers to be commissioned for the ANAM Set, composing a piece for Rachael Kwa.

Her work has received international premieres by ensembles and orchestras such as: Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, DR Vokalensemblet, Bang on a Can, Esbjerg Ensemble, Scandinavian Guitar Duo, Trio Ismena, E-Mex Ensemble, Ensemblage, Gildas Quartet, Judgement of Paris Quartet, Adelaide Wind Orchestra, Sydney Conservatorium of Music Wind Symphony. Milenko has premiered her work as a pianist/conductor at venues such as: Staatsoper Hamburg - Opera Stabile, Associació Cultural Sa Taronja, Verbrugghen Hall.

From 2017-21, she attended academies and masterclasses with composers such as: Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Francesco Filidei, Dmitri Kourliandski, Catherine Milliken, Mark Andre, Zygmunt Krauze, Martin Bresnick - and conductors: Johannes Wildner, Jessica Cottis, Paul Murphy, Kazuki Yamada, Mark Shapiro, Mark Shiell.

Kirsten Milenko — current to May 2022