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Photo: Gerald Geerink

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

In August 2017, she moved to Denmark to study composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music where she studied under Niels Rosing-Schow, Simon Løffler and Jeppe Just Christiensen. She has since graduated from the Master's program in August 2020 and remained in Copenhagen. During her Bachelor's degree, she was awarded the 2016 Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where she studied under Liza Lim, Natasha Anderson, Ursula Caporali and Rosalind Page. She will commence her conducting studies with Arturo Tamayo in 2020 at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana.

Milenko has received the Roche Young Commission 2021, awarded by Wolfgang Rihm, Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival. In March 2020, her debut opera/dance-theatre work 'Dalloway' premiered at Pulsar Festival in Copenhagen; collaborating with dancer Jessica Lyall. She has recently been selected as a finalist for the composition of a new chamber opera at the Mannheim National Theatre, Germany.

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

In addition to her tertiary studies, she has attended composition and conducting masterclasses: The Juilliard School Evening Division Conducting Intensive with Mark Shapiro (U.S. 2020), Académie Voix Nouvelles with Ensemble MusikFabrik, Eva Reiter, Francesco Filidei and Dmitri Kourliandski (France 2020), Dartington Summer School & Festival Advanced Composition with Sir Harrison Birtwistle (UK 2019), International Masterclass for Orchestral Conductors with Professor Johannes Wildner and the Berlin Sinfonietta (Germany 2019), Hatched Academy, Ensemble Offspring (Australia 2018), Dartington International Summer School (UK 2018), NORD+MIX Workshop (Lithuania 2018), Conductor's Workshop with Jessica Cottis and the Royal Philharmonic Society (UK 2017), Synthetis International Summer School for Composition (Poland 2016).

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

Kirsten Milenko — current to September 2020