By Ross Motter
On March 21, The Concordia Choir Instagram announced that Stephanie Tubiolo would be joining the choral faculty, where she will serve as an assistant professor of choral music and the conductor of Concordia’s Chapel and Kantorei Choirs.
Tubiolo holds a BA in Music from Yale College, a Masters in Music for Choral Conducting from the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, and a Doctor or Musical Arts in Music from Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University. She won the Irene Alm Memorial Prize for Excellence in Performance and Scholarly Research at Rutgers for her doctoral work. Now, she couldn’t be more thrilled to move to the Midwest with her husband and two cats.
“Concordia’s devotion to building community is completely aligned with my own values and the reasons I love choir so much,” said Tubiolo. “I have admired the choral culture of the Midwest since I became a conductor – not only the glorious sounds, but the commitment to singing with heart and true togetherness. I am so grateful I’ll get to be part of it.”
Tubiolo visited campus this last spring, where she met with students, staff and faculty and heard some of the jazz choirs perform. She is ecstatic and “feels very lucky to have the opportunity to make music with them every day.”
In addition to conducting and teaching, Tubiolo manages NextWorks through the Yale Glee Club, which commissions five choral pieces a year. NextWorks is an organization that hires musical composers to write pieces that will be accessible to choirs across the world. The pieces commissioned through NextWorks live in the public domain for two years, according to their website.
Each piece commissioned is done in four different arrangements and comes with learning materials and subsidized Zoom calls with the composer of the piece for the choir—all at no cost to the choirs performing their piece.
“Conductors of all sorts of choirs are able to request music and learning resources for these pieces completely free of charge,” said Tubiolo. “As we continue developing this project, I am sure I’ll bring many cool new pieces to Concordia.”
Tubiolo hopes to bring a few other initiatives to Concordia, including a Teaching Artist Partnership, student compositions, and interdisciplinary artistic events.
“I built a Teaching Artist partnership between Rutgers and an elementary school near our campus, where we helped to launch a choir program. I love working with young singers and hope to continue this work in Fargo-Moorhead,” said Tubiolo.
Tubiolo’s vision for interdisciplinary artistic events have endless possibilities. Some of her ideas include turning a concert venue into a gallery space, inviting visual artists to paint live while choirs sing and interweaving spoken word and dance into concert programs–among others.
On top of the choral program, Tubiolo enjoys theatre, jazz and opera. Recently, she was in a rodeo-inspired staging of “Carmen” by Bizet, in which she helped prepare the chorus. She hopes to help with productions, however, she “can and will be a very enthusiastic fan” of the performing arts.
