Stephanie

susberich

Composer-Vocalist

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 theatre, 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.

On March 8, 2026 (International Women’s Day), she presented a sold-out performance of her song cycle Songs of Juana Borrero at the cell theatre in Chelsea as part of Carnegie Hall’s city-wide United in Sound: America at 250 Festival, in a program presented by the Cuban Cultural Center and marking the 130th anniversary of the poet’s death. The recording of the cycle was released as her debut album, Songs of Juana Borrero, issued on Composers Concordance Records on March 6, 2026, with cover artwork by the Cuban painter Hector Frank.

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. The cycle has since become a central thread in her compositional voice and performance practice.

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, inviting listeners into a more attentive way of being.