About
Soprano, pianist, and teacher Kimberly Soby brings joy to concert halls and classrooms alike, passionately using her vast experience to promote music for new generations of performers and music lovers.
Teaching experience includes appointments at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, where she was an Adjunct Professor in Voice, and at New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida, a magnet arts high school and college conservatory affiliated with both Miami Dade College and the University of Florida; at New World, she worked in both the musical theater and music departments designing and teaching multiple courses. At University of Connecticut, Kim has led discussion sections for Popular Music and Diversity in American Society, and taught Music Fundamentals and Ear Training, Harmony I and II, and First Year Writing Studio through the English department. In the 2023-24 Academic Year, she will be Instructor of Record for Harmony III and IV, and Feminism and the Arts through the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department.
Her passion for education and performance also brought her to Florida Grand Opera as a Teaching Artist in their Cadenza program, bringing classical music and opera to underprivileged children throughout greater South Florida. Additionally, she performed for three seasons with Young Patronesses of the Opera’s In School Opera Tour.
She attended the University of Connecticut for her undergraduate degree graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Performance in 2007. She then matriculated to New England Conservatory where she earned dual Masters Degrees with Academic Honors and was the sole recipient in 2010 of the Master of Music Degree in Opera Studies. As part of this degree program, she was hired as an Opera Fellow with the now-defunct Opera Boston. While a fellow, she covered and performed an array of challenging, non-traditional repertoire. A new music specialist, she can be heard on recordings released by Naxos, Albany Records, and Centaur Records.
Returning to her home state of Connecticut, Kim is a Ph.D. student in Music Theory and History at the University of Connecticut where she is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research involves synthesis of performance and analysis, gendered biases regarding the woman composer, and the music of Dame Ethel Smyth. She has presented at Association for Literary Critics, Scholars, and Writers; The Southern Graduate Music Research Symposium; and the National Opera Association, in addition to her research being heard on SMT-Pod Season 2 discussing settings of Chamisso's Frauenliebe und -leben. She has also participated in workshops with Dr. Kyle Adams (Indiana University) and Dr. Rhiannon Mathias (Bangor University, UK) For Academic Year 2023-24, she will present her research at the Fourth International Conference on Women's Work in Music as well as the College Music Society's National Conference with her collaborator, Shannon Rose McAuliffe.
Kim is currently the editorial assistant for the American Jewish Year Book, an annual journal dedicated to North American Jewry in print since 1899, and works as a research associate for the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut.
Non-musical interests include the beach, cats, and the Oxford comma. She is reading her way through all of the Pulitzer Prize winning novels and is obnoxious during March Madness while she roots feverishly for UConn basketball. Kim continues to maintain her private voice and piano studio through the wonders of technology.