Stephen Soderberg is Senior Specialist for Contemporary Music in the Music Division of the Library of Congress where he plans and coordinates internet-, concert- and collections-related projects focused on American contemporary classical music. His work has resulted in important web presentations on composers such as Elliott Carter and Roger Reynolds, and he has written numerous entries in the Library’s online Performing Arts Encyclopedia. Soderberg planned and coordinated A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt (proceedings published in Perspectives of New Music 35:2) and helped plan Mirror of Tree, Mirror of Field: A Celebration of the Life and Music of Toru Takemitsu. He regularly produces and conducts both studio and pre-concert interviews with composers whose works are in the collections of the Library of Congress, most recently with Milton Babbitt, Morton Subotnick, Elliott Schwartz, Chinary Ung, Roger Reynolds, and Charles Wuorinen.
As Special Projects Advisor for the Verge Ensemble, Soderberg conceived and coordinated the 2008 3genFestival, a four-month, multi-venue new music festival in Washington, D.C. celebrating the 100th birthdays of Elliott Carter and Olivier Messiaen and 70th birthday of Charles Wuorinen. Soderberg’s blog is hosted on the Verge web site.
Beside his current service on the Board of Directors of the Verge Ensemble, Soderberg previously served as Secretary on the Board of Directors of the Garth Newel Music Center (Warm Springs, Virginia) and advised on music programs while a member of the Board of Directors for the Lorton (Virginia) Arts Foundation.
As an established authority in the field of compositional and mathematical music theory Soderberg has published articles in Journal of Music Theory, Perspectives of New Music, and Music Theory Online. His essay, “Transformational Etudes,” appears in the collection Music Theory and Mathematics (University of Rochester Press, 2008). He has delivered papers at various conferences, including the American Mathematical Society, and the Society for Music Theory. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Maryland and the University of Iowa, and he currently serves on the editorial board of the international Journal of Mathematics and Music, which he helped found. He is a member of The Society for Music Theory, The Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic, and The Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music.
As a violinist, Soderberg performed semi-professionally in various orchestras and chamber ensembles and taught privately for 45 years. He studied violin with Ludwig Schmidt and Charles Treger, viola with William Preucil, and conducting with Henry Veld, Charles Gigante and James Dixon. He was a founding performing member of the former Washington Sinfonia and served as its program director for three years.
