« Ici, ce sont les fantômes d’une mélancolie vaguement néo-tonale que caressent les archets et les cordes, esquissant un voile délicat et séduisant, comme suspendu. »
Toute La Culture
Biography
Kirsten Milenko is a Paris-based Australian composer, conductor, and orchestrator whose work is marked by sculptural, immersive sound worlds. Her compositions are conceived as a form of spatial and perceptual transformation, shaping how material is heard and experienced over time, akin to shifts of light revealing different facets of a single form.
Selected for the 2025–27 Académie internationale des jeunes compositrices with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, she is currently composing a new orchestral work to be premiered at Radio France’s Festival Présences in 2027. Alongside this, she is writing a song cycle in collaboration with soprano and writer Béatrice de Larragoïti. In 2026, she will be artist-in-residence at the French Institute in Latvia and at the DDA (Dirty Deal Audio) residency at Laidi Palace.
Her orchestral and ensemble works have been commissioned and performed internationally by ensembles and orchestras including the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, the CSO (Canberra Symphony Orchestra) Chamber Ensemble, and the Adelaide Wind Orchestra. Early recognition includes the Roche Young Commission (Lucerne Festival, awarded by Wolfgang Rihm), as well as the Adolph Spivakovsky Scholarship for Composition and the John Amis Award.
Alongside her concert work, Milenko has developed a significant output for stage, including Dalloway, a debut opera and dance-theatre work premiered at Pulsar Festival in Copenhagen, and projects presented at Staatsoper Hamburg Opera Stabile in collaboration with Hamburg Ballet’s Junge Choreograf:innen, City Recital Hall Angel Place, and Verbrugghen Hall. Her work Helix for percussion, light, and electronics premiered at Warsaw Autumn 2025 as part of a doctoral research project by percussionist Bartłomiej Sutt.
Her music features on recordings including Relic, to be released by Australian saxophonist Joshua Hyde, and has been broadcast on radio stations such as ABC Classic and DR P2. She has participated in the Words and Music Workshop at the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier under Ted Huffman and Sivan Eldar, and in the Académie of the Festival d’Aix under Andrea Breth.
As a conductor, Milenko trained at the Royal Academy of Music for the Sorrell Women Conductors Programme with Sian Edwards, undertook specialist studies in 20th-century repertoire with Arturo Tamayo at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana, and studied at the École normale de musique de Paris. In 2022, she conducted the Lucerne Festival Orchestra at Zürich’s Town Hall in a performance marking Switzerland’s introduction of marriage equality.
She 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 Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize. She also completed the Cursus programme in composition and computer music at IRCAM with Pierre Jodlowski, and has attended masterclasses with composers including Harrison Birtwistle, Eva Reiter, Francesco Filidei, Zygmunt Krause, and Martin Bresnick.
Milenko is an Associate Artist of the Australian Music Centre.
Sound images that observe a gentleness and curiosity of the human spirit form a red thread throughout my work. Time is approached as an immersive and gradual saturation of the senses, carried to and from points of observation to create sound sculptures.
There is something all-consuming about the nature of music. An immense trust is required from all those involved from the process of creation to performance and recollection. The form of what we carry through these shared interactions, within and beyond the collective space of music, is delicate, as it opens not only the soul but also the heart and mind to the possibility of being changed by what we share.
Music breathes life into a space where we can step through vulnerability, to allow our humanity simply to be, and float in the architecture shaped by the shared observation of music. The space itself becomes both the vessel and the source of change.
Tertiary Studies
Diplôme Supérieur de Direction d’Orchestre, 2ᵉ Cycle Supérieur, École Normale de Musique de Paris (class of 2026), Julien Masmondet
Cursus de composition et d'informatique musicale, IRCAM, Pierre Jodlowski
CAS Contemporary Repertoire Conducting, Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana, Arturo Tamayo
MMus Composition, The Royal Danish Academy of Music, Simon Løffler, Niels Rosing-Schow, Jeppe Just Christensen
BMus Composition, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Liza Lim, Ursula Caporali, Natasha Andersen, Rosalind Page
Academies & Masterclasses
Académie internationale des jeunes compositrices, l’Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Yves Chauris (France 2025-27)
Sorrell Conductors Programme, Sian Edwards, Royal Academy of Music (UK 2022)
Opera Creation Workshop, Académie du Festival d’Aix, Andrea Breth (France 2021)
Soloist Academy Conducting Course, Kazuki Yamada (Switzerland 2021)
The Juilliard School Evening Division Conducting Intensive, Mark Shapiro (U.S. 2020)
Académie Voix Nouvelles, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Eva Reiter, Francesco Filidei and Dmitri Kourliandski (France 2020)
Dartington International Summer School & Festival, Advanced Composition, Sir Harrison Birtwistle (UK 2019)
International Masterclass for Orchestral Conductors, Johannes Wildner, the Berlin Sinfonietta (Germany 2019)
Hatched Academy, Ensemble Offspring, Catherine Milliken, Amanda Cole and Matthew Shlomowitz (Australia 2018)
Dartington International Summer School, the John Amis Award; 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, Jessica Cottis (UK 2017)
Conductor’s workshop, Mark Shiell and Melbourne Youth Orchestras (Australia 2017)
Synthetis International Summer School for Composition, Mark Andre, Johannes Kreidler, Zygmunt Krauze, Martin Bresnick (Poland 2016)
