Login

Enter your username and password

Photo: Gerald Geerink

Kirsten Milenko (b. 1993) is an Australian composer/conductor based in Paris and Copenhagen. Her work spans acoustic and electroacoustic settings of an immersive and beautifully strange nature. Working closely with movement, her music embodies a constant synergy between sound and motion to capture perceptions of environmental space and human form.

Milenko has received the Roche Young Commission 2021, awarded by Wolfgang Rihm, Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival, Switzerland. As a laureate of Voix Nouvelles 2020, she was commissioned by the Fondation Royaumont to compose a new work for the Ulysses Ensemble for their 2021 programme. In March 2020, her opera & dance-theatre work 'Dalloway' premiered at Pulsar Festival. She has recently been shortlisted as a finalist alongside team members Bea Redweik (librettist) and Johan Klint Sandberg (dramaturgist) for the creation of a new opera with the Mannheim National Theatre, Germany.

In August 2017, she moved from Sydney to Copenhagen, initially for an exchange year to study composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music under Niels Rosing-Schow, Simon Løffler, and Jeppe Just Christensen. She stayed in Copenhagen, continuing onto the Master's programme and graduating in 2020. During her Bachelor's degree, she was awarded the 2016 Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize for excellence in composition by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where she studied under Liza Lim, Natasha Anderson, Ursula Caporali and Rosalind Page. Currently, she is studying a CAS in contemporary repertoire conducting with Arturo Tamayo at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana.

In addition to her tertiary studies, she has 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, Mark Shapiro.

Premieres of her work have been given by ensembles and orchestras including: Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Bang on a Can, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Trio Ismena, Esbjerg Ensemble, Ensemblage, Scandinavian Guitar Duo, E-Mex Ensemble, Gildas Quartet, Judgement of Paris Quartet, Adelaide Wind Orchestra, Sydney Conservatorium of Music Wind Symphony, Modest Orchestra. She has performed her work as a pianist at venues such as: Staatsoper Hamburg - Opera Stabile, Associació Cultural Sa Taronja, and as a conductor at Verbrugghen Hall.

Awards: Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize (2016), John Amis Award, Dartington International Summer School (2018), Ian Donald Wilson Memorial Scholarship (2020).

Kirsten Milenko — current to November 2020