Stefania de Kenessey - In Her Words (2022)

This album is a breakthrough for celebrated composer Stefania de Kenessey: it is all electronic, and it is all dance music.

In recent years, de Kenessey has turned increasingly to electronic music composition as a rich source of experimentation, of new sonorities – and of total control. Or something like that. The result is an eclectic combination of vernacular and classical influences that refers, in equal parts, to the Bulgarian and Hungarian folk songs of her childhood; to the historically hallowed Western genres of her education; and to the American popular music of her adulthood.

Her music for dance is infectious, inspiring, rhythmically vibrant, physically compelling. As the composer remarks: “Above all, I search for glimmers of joy and beauty, even in situations (like our current predicament) that are often desperate and ugly.”

In Her Words showcases four results of a fruitful four-year collaboration with choreographer Ariel Grossman, the founder and director of the all-female Ariel Rivka Dance company. The pieces are diverse in sound, outlook, orientation. But they are unified in theme: they all confront the difficulties faced by women everywhere, of all backgrounds, of all stations in life – themes that live close to the composer’s heart.

The album takes its title from one of the pieces which – unlike the others on this release – incorporates spoken word. Four dancers, who lend their names to the four movements, each contributed a moving, sometimes highly intimate confession about their fears, their anguish, their darkest moments. Honored to be entrusted with their narratives but wanting to respect the privacy of the emotionally sensitive material, de Kenessey broke up the dancers’ monologues into short fragments that hint at despair without becoming too explicit or too revelatory.

Like women everywhere, their (our) voices are still struggling to be heard.

New York-based Stefania de Kenessey’s works have been performed widely throughout the city, from Carnegie Hall to Joe’s Pub, and internationally in more than 35 countries, from Australia to Venezuela. Her output ranges from choral, vocal and operatic pieces to chamber and orchestral work, as well as scores for documentary films, theater and dance companies.