STEFA* x Xenia Rubinos on the Talkhouse
The Stars are Aligned for stefa marin alarcon (STEFA*) and Xenia Rubinos
The collaborators/friends talk embodiment in performance, singing, and Born With An Extra Rib.
stefa marin alarcon is the vocalist, composer, and multimedia artist who fronts STEFA*; Xenia Rubinos is a NY-based vocalist, composer, and performing artist. STEFA*’s debut record, Born With An Extra Rib, just came out earlier this summer on Figure & Ground (which was preceded by 2022’s visual work, Born With An Extra Rib: The Film), so to celebrate, stefa and Xenia caught up about its creation. — Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
stefa marin alarcon: It’s good to see you, babe.
Xenia Rubinos: Good to see you, too. It’s been a long time.
stefa: I know, last time I saw you was at your show.
Xenia: That’s crazy! I didn’t see you there. We didn’t get to talk.
stefa: I know. You were conjuring.
Xenia: How have your shows been? I wanted to go to one of them, and I’ve missed them.
stefa: It’s been really good. I’ve been playing with my full band, and that includes Puck, Nick Jozwiak and Miles Francis. Puck started playing keys with us kind of recently, which feels really good. Everyone sings and everyone has very full hearts, and you can’t ask for much more than that. So the shows have been good — and also really intense, because I feel like they’ve definitely been reflecting the times, the energy. I’ve just been trying to hold on to groundedness and not let myself fly away with stress or pressure. Just trying to show up for the moment.
Xenia: That’s awesome. Congratulations on this release. How exciting.
stefa: I know, we did it! Everyone’s like, “Finally!” And I’m like, “Have y’all been waiting that long?” [Laughs.] But it really does take that amount of time. When the work is ready, you can’t rush it, you can’t stall it. You have to wait until it’s ready to fly. It feels really good to have it out.
Xenia: I bet!
stefa: In my astrology, it’s all about publishing right now, and it’s all about sharing my voice and going on the record. So this also feels very of the moment today.
Xenia: The stars are aligned.
stefa: How are you today? How’s your summer been?
Xenia: I’m good. I am really grateful to be healthy and to be working on a lot of things. A lot of really beautiful work has come my way, and I’m really grateful to have that and to have the health to be able to do the work. I’m working on a choral piece for the first time. I’m working on a film project, and then working on my new solo stuff.
stefa: Do you feel like that’s all bleeding into your solo work?
Xenia: Yeah, I think it’s all coming from a similar space, and they all feed each other. The choral work, and just the work on embodiment and the voice, is kind of the centerpiece of everything that I’m doing. I’m trying to apply that practice to all of the projects, of a more embodied way of working.
stefa: I love that you’re talking about embodiment because that was such a central part of this album — my body, and feeling in my body. I feel like when people see the way that I like to work, embodiment is something that comes up a lot. The way that I move in a rehearsal space or on a stage — embodiment is so important to me. I’m disembodied, then I can’t work from that place. So I just love that you’re sharing that. I feel like so many people are craving embodiment right now, because we’re really disembodied as a society and as a country. I feel like the body and the brain are so disconnected, and it’s to our detriment. It’s kind of a tactic, I think, to control and to make us feel unwell. So embodiment in my music and in my performance is at the core of where I want to kind of start from.
How are you feeling with the choral piece?
Xenia: I’ve been doing this project called Circulo de Voces. Something that we talked about a long time ago was just missing the team sport of singing in a group, and wanting to tap into that experience and figure out different ways that that could look. Just thinking about the choral spaces that a lot of us grew up in, and what’s the music that was sung — I’m really curious to ask those questions, of what a choir can be, and reimagine the choir as a public space like a park or a library. It doesn’t need to be only for, quote-unquote, “professional singers,” but anyone with a voice. The commission I’m working on right now is for New Latin Wave. I think you played that same series last year, at Lincoln Center?
stefa: Yeah!
Xenia: They commissioned me to write a piece for Voices of the New, which is a vocal ensemble. They’re going to premiere in September a piece I’m composing.
stefa: Oh, fab.
Xenia: Yeah. It’s interesting because it’s a different way to think of it in terms of, I’m organizing vocal parts to be sung. But even in that, thinking about different ways to score and what I want the music to feel like and what I would like to suggest the singers to feel in their bodies, and how to translate that into a score or composition that’s planned — as opposed to a lot of the things that have been happening in the school, which are more improvised. So it’s a new challenge. But yeah, I just love singing with people. I love singing with you.
stefa: I love singing with you, too! When I was thinking about this conversation, I was revisiting your album [2021’s Una Rosa], and I was just like, Oh, my god. We sang.
Xenia: We did that.
stefa: We har-mon-ized. [Laughs.] I felt like we were really grounded in our performance. That was such a whirlwind year, and I was just so thankful for those harmonies holding it down. It was so beautiful. And we will always have Una Rosa.
Xenia: We will always have Una Rosa. I’m curious to hear about your work in this process of putting this album together, and your [use of your] voice as your instrument?
stefa: Something that I wanted us to talk about in this convo is origin stories, and what was the seed that then grew into our latest work. This word “concept” album has been presented to me about my album, and I was like, “Oh… sure!” I didn’t really think of it that way, and then I was like, “I guess it is a concept album.” When I think about what the seed was for this record, it was “Costillas” — which means “ribs” — and it was about my body, and me trying to understand my body on a deeper level; a level beyond colonization and identities that have been placed on me. It’s wild thinking back that that song also is like my punk song — I’m kind of screaming and I’m using different parts of my voice that I hadn’t used before. So for that to be the starting point of the album — it started with the feeling of wanting to do away with these expectations that were placed on me.
My first record, Sepalina, which was my four song EP — I think about the question behind that being, Where am I from? And I think about the question behind Born With An Extra Rib being, Who am I and where am I going? I’m just feeling really thankful that I get to process my life and my reason for being through my music and through my art. I just feel so thankful that I can do that, and people can resonate with it.
We talk about manifestation — which is so real, like 110%. As orators and storytellers and people who use voice and words to communicate, we are incredibly powerful when it comes to that. I know that I have a very strong word, and when I say something, it becomes real. So I have to be very careful with what I say. In terms of what I was hoping for this project, I was obsessed with the idea of multimedia, and it not just being one thing. I was able to do that with The Kitchen here in New York City — I was an artist-in-residence, and they commissioned me for [Born With An Extra Rib: The Film], essentially. I was able to work with the biggest team that I had worked with, and it was just so mind blowing. And I had a bit of imposter syndrome, too. In a way, I felt out of my body.
Xenia: Sometimes this happens to me, too, where you are actually embodied, but you’re transcendent in that moment. We talk about embodiment so much, but I think in your practice, it’s quite possible that you are often transcending your body.
stefa: Absolutely. And it’s also that responsibility as a lead artist, having to be leading this project, needing to be so embodied and so present so that you can show up for everyone and for yourself. I’m grateful that you use the word transcendence, because I’m like, Was it borderline disassociation? I’m actually not sure what happened there. But I like transcendence better than dissociation.