STEFANIA DE KENESSEY’s music has been heard throughout New York City, from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to Joe’s Pub and LaMama; internationally, it has been performed 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. She has written concertos for such virtuosos as trumpeter Chris Gekker and flutist Elizabeth Mann; she has had premieres with St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Singapore Symphony, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra and the Absolute Ensemble, conducted by Kristjan Järvi.

Honored repeatedly with awards from ASCAP, her music is available on several CD’s, including Gotham Siren (North/South 2014), Keeping Time (Innova 2014), Of Water and Clouds (Tugboat Music 2012), Never Broken (Center Stage 2003), Sing for the Cure (TCC 2000) and Shades of Light, Shades of Dark (North/South 2000).

Her music has been applauded for its “bright, lively quality…accessible melody, with touches of theater music and early rock drifting through it” (New York Times), full of “subtle shifts and changes” (Washington Post), “scintillating” and “sensitive” (American Record Guide).“Her melodic, many-layered, and deeply moving compositions…fully worthy to share a program or disc with masterpieces by Mozart or Brahms…deserve a lasting place in the modern repertoire.” (Fanfare)

She has collaborated regularly with choreographer Ariel Grossman and Ariel Rivka Dance since 2018; her commissions (and co-commissions) have included In Her Words, Lead Me Alone, Mossy, Rhapsody in K, Rust, Mossy, She, Unorthodox and, most recently, What You Want.

Her radical operatic reimagining of Tom Wolfe’s classic novel The Bonfire of the Vanities debuted at El Teatro at El Museo del Barrio in 2015. De Kenessey’s revisions were deep and far-reaching: she created a leading role for a Black female defense attorney and updated the story of greed and corruption all the way to the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange. An opera to some, a music theater piece to others, it was described as having “an appealing and easy-going pop style” (Opera Magazine) yet “caustically witty” (Financial Times).  It was recently released on video by House of Film, with permission from Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Her Spontaneous D-Combustion, a concerto for solo piano performed by pianist Mary Kathleen Ernst, is aired regularly on WQXR-FM in New York City. Her Microvids, a set of 19 piano miniatures written during the Covid 19 pandemic, has just been recorded by award-winning pianist Donna Weng Friedman and will be released in 2022.

Menstrual Rosary, an off-beat video performance piece for two nuns wearing bright red lipstick, was commissioned to celebrate the launch of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Institute at The New School in 2021; it features a text by feminist philosopher Chiara Bottici and poet-provocateur Vanessa Place.

De Kenessey is committed to helping women composers and musicians achieve parity in an unequal, biased world. She serves on the advisory board of The New Historia, an organization dedicated to recovering the unmarked legacies of women throughout the world. For The New School’s 100th anniversary, de Kenessey scored The Women’s Legacy Project, honoring a group of long-forgotten, newly-discovered women who were central to establishing the university. She is also the founding president of the International Alliance for Women in Music.

Stefania de Kenessey holds degrees from Yale (BA) and Princeton (MFA, PhD), and she has taught at The New School as a Professor of Music.