Stefania De Kenessey, a full-time faculty member at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, has received the 2006 American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers Award in the Concert Music Division. Awards are granted by an independent panel and are based upon the unique prestige value of each writer’s catalog of original compositions, as well as recent performances in musical areas not surveyed by the Society. 

Stefania de Kenessey writes music that moves beyond the postmodern categories of our age, such as minimalism, mysticism, neo-romanticism, and eclecticism, by celebrating both beauty and craft as universal values. Tuneful and sophisticated, her idiom fuses tradition with innovation, Eastern modes with Western forms. De Kenessey is the founder and artistic director of The Derriere Guard, an alliance of traditionalist contemporary artists, architects, poets, and composers. She is active as a composer for all instrumental and vocal genres. A native of Budapest, de Kenessey was educated at Yale and Princeton Universities, receiving her doctorate under the tutelage of Milton Babbitt.