Faculty in Focus: Heather Stebbins

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Heather Stebbins grew up soundtracked by a lush and unusual orchestra. Inside her childhood home, a farmhouse surrounded by forest in Maryland's Patapsco State Park, her musical family played the piano, violin and other instruments. Outside their windows, the symphony expanded. Trees rustled and whispered, a literal woodwind section. Birdsong rose and fell with the flocks' migratory patterns. Trains on the nearby B&O Railroad rattled a percussive backbeat.

"Ever since I was a child, I really have been moved by sound," Stebbins said.

Stebbins is now an associate professor of music in the George Washington University Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. As an educator, composer and electronic musician, she helps students think about sound not only as an artistic medium but also as the material of experience, memory and meaning.

"A sound connects us to a very specific place or time, so there's a lot of nostalgia imbued within it," she said. "I often work with field recordings or recordings of commonplace sounds or specific environments because it has the ability to evoke something beyond what, say, a melody played on a flute could do."

That's not to knock the flute. Stebbins' own formal musical education began at age six, when she started cello lessons. She loved the weight of the instrument, the way its vibration created "an embodiment of sound," its similarity in range and tone to the human voice.

As a first-year student at the University of Richmond, she opted into a class called "Computer Music," thinking it would teach her recording techniques she could use to land a coveted job at the campus recording studio. But the course "was actually how to generate and manipulate sounds with the computer," Stebbins said. "So my very first composition experiences were not writing for other [musicians] but writing for a machine and playback."

Stebbins' professor, Benjamin Broening, would change the course of her life and career. He was a founder of the Third Practice Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, where Stebbins began working as a tech specialist. There, she experienced music that incorporated both acoustic and electronic elements-often using interactive electronics, where audio input was processed and played back in real time.

"It introduced me to a lot of living composers, which was not something that I was even aware of because growing up and playing a Western classical instrument, you often play the music of dead white men," Stebbins said. "It was really fascinating to see what composition meant in the early 21st century, and what sort of technologies people were using to expand the palette of sounds available to them."

A "non-musical" musician

That expanded palette shapes her own approach as an active performer and composer. Stebbins' works use sounds created by instruments, found objects, nature and even voltage. They range in form from notated works for chamber ensembles to improvised performances on modular synthesizers.

"Most of what I do is a combination of working with sounds that I've recorded, many of these being non-musical, and processing them either sort of on the computer beforehand or in real time using technology," she said.

Stebbins performs often, including at area art space Rhizome DCand on the National Mall as part of the free "Modular on the Mall" concert series. One "guided improvisation" at the District of Columbia War Memorialtook sweeping, choral synths through a metamorphosis into jangling pizzicato, radio-tuning static, downtempo trip-hop beats and beyond. Her most recent album, "On Separation,"was extensively workshopped through these live performances.

That ability to work with the present moment-to make changes and see the work change in real time-is part of the reason she gravitates toward sound as a medium, Stebbins said.

"Had I had any visual skills I might've become a visual artist, but sound has always been the material that makes sense to me, I think largely because you work with it in time. I can react in real time to whatever I'm doing and keep it going in a way that wouldn't be the same if you were working with a visual medium."

One skillset, many languages

The ability to shift gears in real time was crucial when Stebbins started teaching at GW in 2020, a year thrown into confusion by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the virtual learning period "changed the course of how [she] taught" in some positive ways, Stebbins said.

"I had to rethink how students were going to engage with technologies when we couldn't be in the same space, when we all had different types of computers, and when we couldn't access hardware like microphones or synthesizers or any of the tools that we have in our studio here. I actually think it led to some really nice changes in the curriculum."

Stebbins is on sabbatical for the 2025-26 academic year, but her teaching curriculum is generally focused on hands-on composition classes. Her students gain proficiency in the technical and musical tools they need to make their own work, including audio processors and synthesizers like the legendary Moog(pronounced, if you want to sound like an electronic music insider, to rhyme with "vogue"). She also teaches a course on the history of sound technology for the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences' general education requirement(GPAC). In fall 2026, she'll teach an extended version of this course, "less about making music and more about critically thinking about how sound technology impacts individual human lives and also society at large.

"I love that [GPAC] course because we talk through, basically, since the Industrial Revolution, how we capture and create sound," Stebbins said. "Then we get to today, and we grapple with issues of streaming platforms and digital distribution and intellectual property, and what AI is going to do to music consumption and creation. It's really fascinating to see students think about these tools that they engage with on a daily basis in a new light when they start to peel back the layers and see how they work."

Part of the joy of teaching, Stebbins said, is seeing the variety of "musical languages" that interest her students, and the plethora of structures they build with the same basic set of tools. "I'm never going to make the same type of music as my students, but we can sort of share a language of both tools and skills to get them to a point where they're making what they want to make."

She also loves the way GW students come to music from many backgrounds and perspectives. "Because we're in a liberal arts environment, I'm often working with students who have never studied music traditionally, ever," she said. "And yet they can take these courses and get to a place where they are making their own material. I find that really rewarding."

Stebbins' students often reward her with new perspectives on her own sonic environment and compositional approach, she said. In one assignment, students use a field recording kit to capture a "non-musical sound" as the basis of a piece. Stebbins still remembers a project by student Jess Makler, B.A. '22, who went to a nearby CVS pharmacy and captured the checkout machines' beeping, dinging and artificial voices. Unexpected item in bagging area. If you have your ExtraCare card, please scan it now.

Makler "made the most incredible piece that was sort of funny in the beginning-we all recognize these sounds-but it also had a really powerful message and sonically was really amazing," Stebbins remembered. "It really made me think about [how] the musical material I generally gravitate toward is often from natural environments. Could I then expand and think about how something as seemingly mundane as a checkout machine can be used as musical material?"

Most importantly, learning how to listen to, alter and structure sound can help students expand the ways they tell their own stories and connect with others, Stebbins said. The use of sound that is not language, in particular, can help students take an abstract approach to a potentially more profound truth.

"I have worked with countless students who tell their stories through the medium of sound in a way that connects to everything-from what it's like to be a GW student and what a day in their life is like to personal challenges from back home," Stebbins said. "I think that that is a really important thing, especially if your day is full of a lot of intense study... It's nice to have that creative outlet, and I'm happy to be able to provide it."

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