Kinga Cserjési, the associate artistic director of the Libero Canto School of Singing, is a versatile singing musician with experience as a soprano, singing teacher, conductor and music educator. She discovered Lajos Szamosi’s book, The Path to Free Singing, while working on her master’s degree in choir conducting and Kodály Method at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music (1992). At the time, she was experiencing vocal discomfort and, in its pages, she found answers to all her questions. She felt that this was exactly the approach she was looking for. Years later, when continuing her education in Early Vocal Music at Brabants Conservatory, (1996) she began taking singing lessons with Heent Prins, a student of Lajos Szamosi, who followed his pedagogical principles. She then began to understand that this approach is not just about singing, but about the whole person–about the liberation of breathing, inner freedom, and the freedom of musical and emotional expression.
In 1997, she returned to Budapest and started teaching singing. A year later, she was introduced to Edvin and Hedda Szamosi, Lajos’s children who had continued his work. She continued to work with Edvin for the next 10 years, and in 2010 Kinga and her colleague, Deborah Carmichael, received official licenses from Edvin to teach the Libero Canto Approach–a great honor and huge responsibility.
Kinga has continued to grow as an artist in many different musical disciplines. As a singer she has performed internationally both as a soloist and as a member of various choruses and vocal ensembles such as Ensemble Organum with Marcel Pérès, the Pacific Music Festival with Nicholas McGegan, and L.E.O. (Last Enjoyable Opera Theater) with director Stefan Fleischhacker, and has performed at Carnegie Hall with River Voices and at Lincoln Center as a member of the Constellation Choir. As a music director and conductor, Kinga has led a wide variety of programs within the Libero Canto School of Singing, such as Gluck’s Orphée, The Cozy Side of Beethoven, and Ágról Ágra, a program based entirely on Hungarian folk songs and the a cappella choral pieces of Béla Bartók. She is also a regular guest conductor with the Choral Society of the Hamptons. Kinga has continued her studies in music education and recently received a certification from the Kodaly Summer Institute at New York University, and completed the Waldorf Elementary Music Teacher Education program at the Sunbridge Institute.