Madeleine Isaksson, born in 1956 in Stockholm, studied piano since childhood at various music schools. From 1979 to 1987 she studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, first mainly piano with teachers such as Gunnar Hallhagen and Mats Persson (piano), Eva Nordenfeldt (harpsichord), Hans Eklund (composition) and Bo Wallner (theory/analysis), and then in 1983 entered the composition class with teachers Gunnar Bucht and Sven-David Sandström (composition), Pär Lindgren (electroacoustics), Arne Mellnäs (instrumentation) and Lars-Erik Rosell (counterpoint).
After two master's degrees - in piano pedagogy and composition - scholarships allowed her to continue her composition studies abroad: one year in Amsterdam and then in Paris where she has since lived and worked as a composer.
She has also participated in many courses around Europe, including Darmstadt, the Acanthes Center in Greece, Abbaye Royaumont and IRCAM.
Meetings with composers - Brian Ferneyhough, Louis Andriessen, Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman and Emmanuel Nunes as well as the music of Györgi Ligeti, Giacinto Scelsi and Helmut Lachenmann - all contributed to Isaksson's development as a composer.
Her music is concerned with polyphony, spatialization and the blurring of instrumental timbres. Her basic framework can be described as spatial forms: intervals, registers and time, where the material develops through different levels and contrasting terms. The music is related to a perceptible, but often hidden, elastic pulse, which is realised through increasing and decreasing time signatures.
Madeleine Isaksson writes for various ensembles, instrumental as vocal, and for orchestra.
Her compositions have been commissioned and performed by ensembles as KammarensembleN, Norrbotten NEO, Gageego!, ensemble recherche, Ma, l’Itinéraire, 2e2m, members of Ensemble Intercontemporain, Arditti Quartet, London Sinfonietta, Aventa, Nordic Voices, Exaudi, duo Gelland, ZPR String Trio, and orchestras as Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Musica Vitae, and presented at festivals as Witten, Beijing, World Music Days (ISCM), Nordic Music Days, Royaumont, the International piano festival La Roque d’Anthéron ...
Isaksson’s music has been recorded by several Europeans labels, notably for Phono Suecia on the portrait disc Failles (2005), the recording of the extended recorder solo Les sept vallées for Daphnes Records (2022), and the portrait disc Infiltrations for Footprint Records (2024).
In 2012 she received the chamber music prize Saltö Award for Les sept vallées, and in 2019, the Rosenberg Award:
" Madeleine Isaksson's music is characterised by careful work with and interest in the unique sound worlds of acoustic instruments. She receives the prize for a long-standing, versatile and original production characterised by uncompromising and high artistic integrity."
The same year she was elected as member of the The Royal Swedish Academy of Music.