Kirsten Milenko
An Australian composer and conductor based in Paris, currently in artistic residence with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris (2025–27, as part of the International Academy of Young Women Composers program). In collaboration with author and singer Béatrice de Larragoïti (soprano), Milenko is currently working on a song cycle. Her conducting projects, which originally grew out of her own work as a composer, now span a broad concert and stage repertoire. The artist is continuing her studies at the École Normale de Musique de Paris.
Milenko studied composition with Simon Løffler and Niels Rosing-Schow at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, as well as under Liza Lim and Natasha Anderson at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (where she received the Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize for outstanding achievement in composition, 2016). She completed the composition and computer music course led by Pierre Jodlowski at IRCAM. She has also attended summer academy masterclasses led by Harrison Birtwistle, Eva Reiter, Francesco Filidei, Zygmunt Krauze, and Martin Bresnick.
Her compositional output includes a work commissioned by Wolfgang Rihm, Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival (as part of the Roche Young Commissions program, 2019), her opera-ballet debut Dalloway (premiered at the Pulsar Festival in Copenhagen, 2020), a composition written for the Australian National Academy of Music’s ANAM Set festival (2022) broadcast on ABC Classic, as well as Helix for percussion, light effects, and electronics, which premiered at the Warsaw Autumn Festival 2025 as part of percussionist Bartłomiej Sutt’s doctoral thesis.
The artist has participated in the “Words and Music” workshops with the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier, led by Ted Huffman and Sivan Eldar (2020–21), and in courses by Andrea Breth at the Aix-en-Provence Festival Academy (2021). Her honors include the Adolph Spivakovsky Scholarship for Composition, the John Amis Prize, and grants from the Fondation Idella and Almene Fond through programs at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. Her works have been premiered by ensembles such as the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), Ensemble Musikfabrik, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players, and the Adelaide Wind Orchestra.
Milenko studied conducting under Sian Edwards as part of the Sorrell Foundation Women Conductors course at the Royal Academy of Music in the UK. She explored the interpretation of 20th-century repertoire under Arturo Tamayo at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana. The artist is also active as an orchestrator; her work includes orchestrating electronic pieces by SØS Gunver Ryberg (commissioned by the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra for the SPOT Festival 2022) and arranging Wagner (the Tannhäuser Overture for brass, strings, and percussion, premiered at the Gare du Nord Center for New Music in Basel in 2023).
Milenko is an Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre.
