about

Mila Henry is a conductor, pianist and music director, as well as Artistic Director of Brooklyn-based company The American Opera Project (AOP). Hailed “a stalwart contributor to the contemporary opera scene” (Opera Ithaca), she provides musical dramaturgy to AOP works in development and serves as Head of Music for their renowned Composers & the Voice training program for composers and librettists.

Outside of AOP, Mila maintains an active and versatile career, leading works spanning rock musicals to folk operas to reimagined classics. She conducted the world premieres of Letters That You Will Not Get: Women's Voices from the Great War (AOP), Magdalene (PROTOTYPE) and Words on the Street (Baruch PAC); assisted on As One (AOP) and The Night Falls (BalletCollective, PEAK Performances); and was Vocal Director for the Obie-winning The World is Round (Ripe Time). She has helmed workshops and productions with Circle in the Square (Circle Series), Page 73 and Pittsburgh CLO, as well as at BerkleeNYC, College Light Opera Company, Columbia University, NYU Tisch and Princeton University. Her familiarity with contemporary vocal music has allowed her to take part in grant panels for New Music USA and OPERA America, and on the New Music Advisory Board for Brooklyn Art Song Society.

A “terrific” pianist (Opera News), Mila doubled on synthesizer for We Shall Not Be Moved (Opera Philadelphia, The Apollo, Dutch National Opera), and served as rehearsal pianist for Iphigenia (Real Magic, Octopus Theatricals). She has worked extensively with Beth Morrison Projects, HERE and PROTOTYPE, playing for Looking at You (HERE), Mata Hari, Persona (BMP, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) and Thumbprint (which toured to LA Opera), and as répétiteur for Acquanetta, Anatomy Theater, Angel’s Bone, the difficulty of crossing a field (BMP, Cantaloupe Music), Ouroboros Trilogy, p r i s m, The Scarlet Ibis and Song from the Uproar (BMP, LA Opera). She has also collaborated with American Lyric Theater, Experiments in Opera, Opera on Tap and OPERA America, including their Creators in Concert programs for Anthony Davis, Laura Kaminsky, Missy Mazzoli and Kamala Sankaram.

She has performed cabarets at Café Sabarsky, Feinstein’s/54 Below and Joe's Pub; art song at Library of Congress, Merkin Concert Hall, New York Festival of Song, NOVA and Phoenix Concerts; chamber music at National Sawdust, The Stone and Queens New Music Festival; new works at BAM Lepercq, Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center, McCarter Theatre Center and Symphony Space; and excerpts at The Greene Space and The Schomburg Center. Additionally, she has been a guest artist alongside Either/Or, Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, Hotel Elefant and Refugee Orchestra Project.

Her recording credits include Later the Same Evening (Albany Records), Looking at You (Bright Shiny Things), Love & Trouble (Roven Records), Thumbprint (National Sawdust Tracks) and Voices of Women (Affetto Records). She is also a multi-instrumentalist in the alt-country band Opera Cowgirls, whose digital 5-song EP is searchable online.

Mila holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music (Master of Music, Collaborative Piano) and Elizabethtown College (Bachelor of Arts in Music, Piano). She is based in New York.