site.btaAlbum with Music by Bulgarian Composer Wins 2022 Grammy Award

Bulgarian composer Penka Kouneva has written seven of the 14 chapters in the album “Women Warriors - The Voices of Change,” which won a Grammy award in the Best Classical Compendium category.

The 64th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony took place at the Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Sunday evening.

Kouneva wrote seven of the 17 chapters in the soundtrack to the original live-to-picture symphonic album written entirely by women film composers. The album, conducted and co-produced by Amy Andersson, tells the stories of women who dedicated their lives in the pursuit of a more equitable world, fighting for social justice, human and civil rights, environmental causes, minority rights, gender equality and for the right of every girl to an education.

The Bulgarian-born composer authored the chapters about the most dramatic stories: the AIDS crisis in the US in the 1980s, Native American women fighting against the construction of a polluting gas pipeline, Palestinian and Israeli women struggling for Middle East peace, and the Me Too movement against sexual abuse of women. 

Kouneva is a Bulgarian-American composer, orchestrator and soundtrack producer. In 1990, she was awarded the Mary Duke Biddle Graduate Fellowship to study composition at Duke University. Kouneva has released two award-winning concept albums: The Woman Astronaut (2015) and A Warrior's Odyssey (2012). Her music is a blend of Bulgarian influences, classical training, rock sensibility, and modern film and game soundtracks.