“Une musique de l’errance aux textures flottantes et registres clairs.”
Kirsten Milenko (b. 1993) is an Australian composer, conductor and orchestrator based in Paris. Her music embodies acoustic and electronic settings of an immersive and beautifully strange nature. As a conductor, her work began as an extension of composition and has since evolved across a diverse repertoire for concert and stage.
Milenko studied composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she received the 2016 Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize for excellence in composition. She recently completed the 2022-23 Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music at IRCAM. Milenko studied orchestral conducting at the Royal Academy of Music on the Sorrell Women Conductors Program, and at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana to specialise in contemporary repertoire.
Her compositions have received premieres by ensembles and orchestras such as: Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, Danish National Vocal Ensemble, CSO Chamber Ensemble, Ensemblage, Bang On A Can, Gildas Quartet, Esbjerg Ensemble, Scandinavian Guitar Duo, Adelaide Wind Orchestra. She has premiered her work as a pianist/conductor at: Staatsoper Hamburg Opera Stabile, 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 to celebrate the first gay marriages in Switzerland.
In 2019, Milenko was awarded the Roche Young Commission by Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival, Wolfgang Rihm. In 2020, her debut opera and dance-theatre piece Dalloway premiered at Pulsar Festival in Copenhagen. She was a participant of 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. Her recent work Tempête for soprano and electronics focused on a multidisciplinary approach to theatre by fusing light programming with live and electronic composition.
Her work as an orchestrator includes projects such as a series of orchestral remixes of electronic pieces by SØS Gunver Ryberg for the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra at SPOT Festival 2022, and Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture for Mizmorim Festival 2023.
Milenko is an Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre.
“Harmonies that slowly slide into each other ... The drum turns into a kind of wind machine with a rippling effect that almost acts as a sonic smoke cannon to put a fog or mysterious smoke veil at the bottom of the soundscape.”
Sound images that observe a gentleness and curiosity of the human spirit form a red thread throughout my work, where time is approached as an immersive and gradual over-saturation of the senses. There is something about music that is all-consuming in a beautiful way, in how we interact with the form by sharing a collective space and time. This experience requires an immense amount of trust from all those involved from the process of creating to listening. — (August 2022)
Tertiary Studies
Cursus de composition et d'informatique musicale: IRCAM with Pierre Jodlowski
CAS Contemporary Repertoire Conducting: Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana with Arturo Tamayo
MMus Composition: The Royal Danish Academy of Music with Simon Løffler, Niels Rosing-Schow, Jeppe Just Christensen
BMus Composition: Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Liza Lim, Ursula Caporali, Natasha Andersen, Rosalind Page
Academies & Masterclasses
Sorrell Conductors Programme with Sian Edwards; Royal Academy of Music (UK 2022)
Opera Creation Workshop; Académie du Festival d’Aix with Andrea Breth (France 2021)
Soloist Academy Conducting Course with Kazuki Yamada (Switzerland 2021)
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 International Summer School & Festival; Advanced Composition with Sir Harrison Birtwistle (UK 2019)
International Masterclass for Orchestral Conductors; Professor Johannes Wildner and the Berlin Sinfonietta (Germany 2019)
Hatched Academy with Ensemble Offspring, Catherine Milliken, Amanda Cole and Matthew Shlomowitz (Australia 2018)
Dartington International Summer School, the John Amis Award; with the Dead Rat Orchestra and Neil Brand (UK 2018)
NORD+MIX Workshop; Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (Lithuania 2018)
The Royal Philharmonic Society Conductor’s Workshop with Jessica Cottis (UK 2017)
Conductor’s workshop with Mark Shiell and Melbourne Youth Orchestras (Australia 2017)
Synthetis International Summer School for Composition; with Mark Andre, Johannes Kreidler, Zygmunt Krauze, Martin Bresnick (Poland 2016)
