Leon MILO, composer and percussionist, creates music and sonic environments in which instruments, electronics, natural sounds and synthesis are unified. The music is projected into multi-channeled spaces with the instruments treated in real-time and in parallel with other electronic parts.

His works have been presented the world over and include instrumental and electroacoustic music for the concert hall, dance, film, television, radio, public sound installations, galleries and museums such as The Pompidou Center (with Arik Levy) , The Gallo Roman Museum in Saint-Romain-en-Gal, The Aerospace Museum in Bourget, France, The Luxemborg Gardens in Paris (for designer Florence Bost), ...

Commissions and premiers have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Ensemble, The Borealis Festival in Bergen, Norway (four sound installations for the "Lydgalleriet") , New Music Los Angeles, Los Angeles Piano Spheres, The International Beethoven Festival, IRCAM (Paris), Radio France, Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Mexico City, 38éme Rugissants, (Grenoble) and the Festival Ile de France…

Receiving his Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, he worked as percussionist and timpanist in orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic among others.

Major studies in composition were with Professor Leonard Stein (former director of the USC Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles), William Kraft, Luciano Berio and Jacob Druckman. Invited in 1987 to the Sundance Film Institute in Utah by Robert Redford and David Newman to develop film music projects, he now composes regularly for European television and Cinema.

In 1990, he received a Fulbright Fellowship for composition study in Paris. He began to incorporate new technologies into his works and soon after, was selected to take part in the one year course in composition and computer music at IRCAM, Paris.

Recently, there have been premieres of new works for piano, electronics and percussion for Susanne Kessel at the Beethoven House recital Hall in Bonn, and a new work for the “Festival Octobre en Normandie” written for the Brazilian Percussion Trio “Sete Portas” together with the flutists of the Trio d’Argent, (France) with live improvised electronics. In September 2008, he will be presenting new works for Organ, Piano and Electronics for performances at the Bonn Cathedral in honor of Messiaen’s 100th. birthday and produced by the International Beethoven Festival. Performers are Markus Karas, Organ and Susanne Kessel, Piano.

“La Derniére Minute”, a short fiction film for Canal+ for which Leon wrote music and created sound design was chosen as an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival, 2004 and went on to win best sound track for European short fiction in Barcelona.

In January 2008, he took part in a group exibition entitled "Rainbow Audio Transformations" at the Extra City Gallery, Antwerp. He is currently developing an exibition (The London Project) which will intergrate sound and image with fine artist Natasha Newton.

Leon Milo and Susanne Kessel have recently founded the Duo “Pianowaves” which gave it’s first performances of works for Piano, electronics and percussion at the 2007 Beethoven Festival in Bonn.


back home