Full Bio:
Stefanie Lubkowski’s initial compositional efforts involved developing unusual timbres on her mother’s Wurlitzer organ and experimenting with sound collages in her high school electronic music studio. These early explorations nurtured Stefanie’s interest in creating sound worlds guided by harmony and punctuated by melody. Her main sources of inspiration are literature and the natural world.
Stefanie has written for orchestra, wind band, voice, various chamber ensembles, and electronic media. She has been commissioned by Auros Group for New Music, New Gallery Concert Series, The Fourth Wall Ensemble, Transient Canvas, Charles River Wind Ensemble, NakedEye Ensemble, Peridot Duo, smol ensemble, RAHA Duo, and soprano Elisabeth Halliday-Quan. She has supplied works for four of Rivers Conservatory of Music’s Seminar on Contemporary Music in Weston, MA. She was also the Concord Academy Composer-in-Residence in 2018-2019. Stefanie is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Music Composition Finalist Grant for 2015.
Stefanie is a regular participant in the Bait/Switch initiative, a multi-disciplinary art project based on the mechanics of the “exquisite corpse” party game. She has written three miniatures for the initiative: Friction Clouds, Serrated Spoon, and Saints and Snakes. These pieces were inspired by a cocktail, an essay about grapefruit, and a pen and ink drawing, respectively. You can experience these creations at www.baitswit.ch.
Alongside her concert music activities, Stefanie was a guitarist and songwriter in the punk/metal/doom band Niffin, with fellow composers Aaron Jay Myers, Clover Nahabedian, Brian Church, and Steven Moreno. They released their album, False Tongues, via Bandcamp, in 2020. She is currently producing a dark ambient electronica album with composer Aaron Jay Myers under the name Balaenoptera.
Stefanie has been a fellow at Avaloch Farm Music Institute in New Hampshire in 2015 and 2013, Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP) at New England Conservatory in 2014, the High Score Festival in Pavia, Italy in 2011, and the Composers Symposium at the Oregon Bach Festival in 2007.
She is committed to supporting her fellow new music performers, composers, and organizations. To that end, Stefanie has served on the boards of New Gallery Concert Series (2010-2020) and Equilibrium (2015-2020).
Stefanie studied Music and Technology and Guitar Performance at Connecticut College in New London, CT, and received her masters in composition from New England Conservatory where her primary teachers were Lee Hyla and Pozzi Escot. She received her doctorate in composition from Boston University in 2014, where her teachers included Ketty Nez and Sam Headrick. She then taught composition and theory as visiting faculty at Brown University during the 2014-2015 academic year and at Concord Academy from 2018-2023.
She currently serves as the Grants Manager at ZUMIX in East Boston.
Short bio:
Stefanie Lubkowski’s initial compositional efforts involved developing unusual timbres on her mother’s Wurlitzer organ and experimenting with sound collages in her high school electronic music studio. These early explorations nurtured Stefanie’s interest in creating sound worlds guided by harmony and punctuated by melody. Her main sources of inspiration are literature and the natural world. She went on to study Music and Technology and Guitar Performance at Connecticut College in New London, CT, and received her masters in composition from New England Conservatory where her primary teachers were Lee Hyla and Pozzi Escot.
Stefanie has written for orchestra, voice, various chamber ensembles, and electronic media. She has been commissioned by Auros Group for New Music, New Gallery Concert Series, The Fourth Wall Ensemble, Transient Canvas, Charles River Wind Ensemble, NakedEye Ensemble, Peridot Duo, smol ensemble, RAHA Duo, and soprano Elisabeth Halliday-Quan Her first opera, The Plague Bearer, premiered as a film produced by Strange Trace in November, 2022. Stefanie received her doctorate in composition from Boston University in 2014, where her teachers included Ketty Nez and Sam Headrick. She then taught composition and theory as visiting faculty at Brown University during the 2014-2015 academic year and at Concord Academy from 2018-2023. Stefanie is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Music Composition Finalist Grant for 2015. She currently serves as the Grants Manager at ZUMIX in East Boston.