About Kim

Dr. Kimberly Soby is a soprano, pianist, and teacher who brings joy to concert halls and classrooms alike, passionately using her broad experience to promote music for new generations of performers and music lovers.

 

She recently completed her Ph.D. in Music Theory and History at the University of Connecticut, along with a Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her dissertation, “Can Sound Wear Tweeds? Exploring Gender Through Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers,” investigates whether sound itself can be gendered and how gendered meaning is imposed on music by listeners. Her research engages feminist theory, interdisciplinary methods, and questions of gendered perception, musical meaning, and aesthetic expectation.

 

Her teaching experience spans a wide range of subjects and institutions. At UConn, she has served as Instructor of Record for courses including Music Fundamentals and Ear Training, the full Undergraduate Music Theory sequence (Harmony I–IV), First-Year Writing Studio (English), and Feminism and the Arts (WGSS). She has also led discussion sections for Popular Music and Diversity in American Society. In addition to teaching, she works as an editorial assistant for the American Jewish Year Book, an annual scholarly publication based at UConn. Prior appointments include Nova Southeastern University and New World School of the Arts in Miami, where she taught across the music and musical theater departments.

 

Her work as a performer-educator has included teaching artistry with Florida Grand Opera’s Cadenza program and three seasons of touring with Young Patronesses of the Opera’s In School Opera Tour, bringing classical music and opera to schools throughout South Florida.

 

A specialist in new music, Kim can be heard on recordings released by Naxos, Albany Records, and Centaur Records. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree magna cum laude in Vocal Performance at the University of Connecticut and dual Master of Music degrees with Academic Honors in Vocal Performance and Opera Studies from New England Conservatory, where she was the sole recipient of the Opera Studies degree in 2010. As part of this program, she was an Opera Fellow with the now-defunct Opera Boston, covering and performing a wide range of challenging, non-traditional repertoire.

 

Kim has presented research at the Association for Literary Critics, Scholars, and Writers, the National Opera Association, and the Fourth International Conference on Women’s Work in Music. With collaborator Shannon Rose McAuliffe, she has also presented at Feminist Theory & Music, College Music Society, and the National Opera Association. Her work is featured on SMT-Pod (Season 2), where she discusses gendered musical settings of Chamisso’s Frauenliebe und -leben.

 

Outside of music, she enjoys the beach, cats, and the Oxford comma. She is enthusiastically (and, by her own admission, obnoxiously) devoted to UConn basketball, especially during March Madness, and continues to maintain a private voice and piano studio thanks to the wonders of technology.