Kirsten Milenko (b. 1993) is an Australian composer, conductor and orchestrator based in Paris. Her compositions embody an immersive and beautifully strange nature in acoustic and electronic settings. As a conductor, her work began as an extension of composition and has since evolved across a diverse repertoire for concert and stage. 

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. She will soon debut her album with Sylvie Woods at the Théâtre du Temps in Paris.

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

Her compositions have received premieres by ensembles and orchestras such as: Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, 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. 

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.