Stephanie

susberich

Dr. Stephanie Susberich (DMA, Composition, University of Missouri–Kansas City, 2025)

is a composer and vocalist whose work inhabits the space where story, resonance,

and ritual converge. She is the founder and artistic director of DVSSIMA,

a New York–based creative house and salon series devoted to intimate, immersive

musical experiences shaped by elegance, interiority, and form.

Her music has been premiered by ensembles and organizations including the Etchings

Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Radius Ensemble. As a performer,

she has appeared in venues ranging from Los Angeles’s Viper Room to NJPAC,

and throughout New York City at Joe’s Pub, Dixon Place, The Cell, Cornelia Street Café,

NYU’s Kimmel Center, Pangea, and Old St. Patrick’s Basilica, as well as at Kansas City’s

Immaculate Conception Cathedral and the University of Missouri–Kansas City’s

White Hall and Grant Hall.

Dr. Susberich’s doctoral dissertation composition, The Lily of Quito, is a 33-minute cantata

for soprano, flute, classical guitar, piano, violin, viola, cello, and percussion. Centered on

Saint Mariana of Jesus, patroness of Ecuador, the work sets the saint’s original words and

traces a devotional arc of sacrifice, beauty, and transcendence. The cantata has been

included in Joaquín Rodrigo’s musical archives due to its quotation of a melody from his

aria La despedida de azucena, drawn from the unfinished oratorio La Azucena de Quito.

Her master’s thesis at Tufts University (2022) set the poetry of the nearly forgotten

Cuban poetess Juana Borrero, whose brief life was marked by intensity, devotion, and

visionary inwardness. This song cycle, Songs of Juana Borrero, will be released in March

2026 on Composers Concordance Records and will be featured in Carnegie Hall’s

United in Sound: America at 250 Festival, presented by the Cuban Cultural Center.

While completing her doctorate, Dr. Susberich served for three semesters as Graduate

Teaching Assistant in the UMKC Composition Department, teaching laboratories in

instrumentation, notation, and twentieth-century counterpoint, and offering private

composition instruction to undergraduate composers. She earned a High Pass on her

DMA comprehensive examinations and maintained a 4.0 GPA throughout her doctoral

studies.

Her work across composition, performance, and curatorial practice is guided by a belief

in music as a discreet but potent force — one that speaks through beauty, restraint, and

mystery, and invites listeners into a more attentive way of being.

by Stephanie Susberich