Shortened biography

Madeleine Isaksson (1956) studied piano and composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. After two postgraduate degrees - in piano pedagogy and composition - she continued her composition studies abroad: for a year in Amsterdam and then in Paris, where she has lived since as a composer.
Encounters with composers, their different traditions and aesthetic characteristics - Brian Ferneyhough, Louis Andriessen, Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman and Emmanuel Nunes, as well as music by Giacinto Scelsi and Helmut Lachenmann - have all contributed to Isaksson's early development as a composer. Her close relationship with contemporary art, especially photography and poetry,  has always accompanied her perception of time and music.

Madeleine writes for various instrumental/vocal ensembles and for orchestra.
Her music is highly concentrated and characterised by a detail and variety in the treatment of phrases, sounds and processes that are held together by an almost physical movement in fluctuating meters. Her basic frameworks can be described as forms of space: interval, register and time, where the material evolves through different levels of time in contrasting terms.

She has received awards such as the Saltö Foundation's chamber music prize for the solo Les sept vallées (recorders) and latest in 2019 the Rosenberg Prize with the motivation: "Madeleine Isaksson's music is characterised by careful work with and interest in the unique sound world of acoustic instruments. She receives the prize for a long-standing, versatile and original production
characterised by uncompromising and high artistic integrity" .

In spring 2024, a new portrait disc of her chamber music, performed by the ensemble Gageego! will be released on Footprints Records AB. 

Madeleine Isaksson's music is regularly commissioned for and performed by leading international musicians and ensembles at concerts and festivals in Europe, Asia and overseas.