Penka Kouneva is a Bulgarian-American composer, orchestrator and soundtrack producer. In 1999, she began working in film & television and in 2009 began to score for videogames . Her music is a blend of Bulgarian influences, classical training, rock sensibility, and modern film and game soundtracks. Kouneva has released two award-winning concept albums: The Woman Astronaut and A Warrior's Odyssey both receiving 5-star press.
Adolescence and Early Career (1990–1999)
Kouneva was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria, and began studying piano at the age of six. Her mother was a professor of music theory at the Bulgarian Academy of Music and her father was a scientist at the Institute of Chemical Technologies. At the age of twelve, Kouneva composed and performed incidental music for a children’s theater show that ran for a season. She earned fifteen dollars per show; the official start of her career as a paid composer. Kouneva attended the Sofia High School of Music and achieved a degree in piano. She later enrolled in the National Academy of Music and graduated with a degree in music theory. In 1990, she was awarded the Mary Duke Biddle Graduate Fellowship to study composition at Duke University. At Duke she studied composition and orchestration with the American orchestral composers Stephen Jaffe and Scott Lindroth and with the Dutch post-minimalistLouis Andriessen. In 1997, Kouneva received Duke University's first-ever Ph.D. degree in composition in the brand-new doctoral program. In 1997, she also received a Green Card as an “Alien of Extraordinary Abilities.”
Kouneva is on the Advisory Board of Game Developers Conference, the world’s foremost conference for game professionals, an Advisor for Sundance Composers Lab and a Mentor for Game Audio Network Guild Scholars. As a guest artist, she has presented invited lectures and seminars at Duke University, Davidson College, USC, Berklee College of Music, Berklee Valencia, CalArts, The Musicians’ Institute, CSULB and many others. She has also presented at the following conferences: Game Developers Conference, East Coast Game Conference, Power Of Play, Intel Buzz Workshop London, The Society of Composers and Lyricists, Game Sound Con, amongst many other. Kouneva is profiled in two textbooks and Tom Hoover's “Soundtrack Nation”, in a Keynote address, in national press and NPR. Additionally, she has been included in two feature-length documentaries: Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound and SCORE: A Film Music Documentary.
Mentoring and Advocacy
Kouneva is known for building and training high-performance teams for score production. Amongst her notable protégés are the Hollywood composers & orchestrators Philip Klein, Ben Bromfield, Alexandre Cote, Catherine Grealish, Dallas Aimer, Nicolas Repetto, Steven Melin,Amie Doherty, Fred Emory Smith and many others. Kouneva's arrival to Hollywood was unprepared for the business aspects of entertainment, so she focuses to instructing her protégés to be ready for such challenges. Kouneva’s Composer Career Master Classes are published online by Designing Music Now. Her Gears of War 2 Main Theme analysis is published by Output.com. Kouneva is also an advocate for artist growth and for the advancement of women composers. She has led, curated and participated in panels, seminars, and concerts promoting women film & game composers in Los Angeles, at GDC,and the Society of Composers and Lyricists.
Philanthropy
In 2015, Kouneva established and funded an Orchestral Reading for Duke Graduate Composers with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra. Two graduate composers selected by Duke Music Department will receive a professional reading and recording of their compositions by the nationally recognized symphony orchestra. With this opportunity, she hopes to give a competitive edge to composers as they start out their careers.
Personal life
In 2004 Kouneva married music editor Daniel Schweiger and has one daughter with him, born in 2006.
Discography
The lists below show some of Kouneva's most notable work.
