Biography

Kirsten Milenko is a Paris-based Australian composer, conductor, and orchestrator whose works embody an ethereal and immersive nature. Spanning acoustic and electronic settings, she approaches her music as a form of sculpture, with each gesture slowly reshaping the listener’s perception and anticipation of material. She is currently an Académicienne for the 2025–27 Académie internationale des jeunes compositrices with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, and is composing a song cycle for soprano Béatrice de Larragoïti. Her conducting, initially developed through her work as a composer, has expanded through studies in 20th-century repertoire and orchestral conducting, encompassing a diverse repertoire for concert and stage. 

In 2019, Milenko was awarded the Roche Young Commission by Wolfgang Rihm, Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival. Her debut opera and dance-theatre work, Dalloway, premiered at Pulsar Festival in Copenhagen in 2020. She was commissioned for the 2022 ANAM Set, which was featured on ABC Classic. Her work Helix, composed for percussion, light, and electronics, was premiered at Warsaw Autumn 2025 as part of percussionist Bartłomiej Sutt’s PhD project. She also participated in the 2020–21 Words and Music Workshop with the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier, led by Ted Huffman and Sivan Eldar, and attended the Académie du Festival d’Aix with Andrea Breth in 2021.

Milenko studied composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music with Simon Løffler and Niels Rosing-Schow, and at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Liza Lim and Natasha Anderson, where she received the 2016 Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize for excellence in composition. She also completed the Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music at IRCAM with Pierre Jodlowski. Her conducting studies include the Sorrell Women Conductors Program at the Royal Academy of Music with Sian Edwards, specialised studies in 20th-century repertoire at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana with Arturo Tamayo. She is currently studying orchestral conducting at the École normale de musique de Paris with Julien Masmondet.

Her compositions have received international premieres by ensembles and orchestras including the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra (CSO) Chamber Ensemble, and the Adelaide Wind Orchestra. Milenko’s music has been recorded on several albums, including Relic, which will feature on an upcoming release by Australian saxophonist Joshua Hyde. She has premiered her works at the Staatsoper Hamburg Opera Stabile in collaboration with Hayley Page for the Hamburg Ballet’s Jungen Choreograf:innen, City Recital Hall Angel Place, Associació Cultural Sa Taronja, and Verbrugghen Hall. In July 2022, she conducted the Lucerne Festival Orchestra at Zürich’s Town Hall in celebration of Switzerland’s first gay marriages.

Her orchestration work includes a series of orchestral remixes of electronic pieces by SØS Gunver Ryberg for the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra at SPOT Festival 2022, as well as a reduced orchestration of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture for brass and strings in 2023.

Milenko is an Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre.