Lawrence Stomberg

Biography

Cellist Lawrence Stomberg enjoys a varied career of performance as soloist and chamber musician, pedagogue, and in community outreach through music. Hailed for "style and elegance" and “drama and rhetoric" (Strings Magazine), and “lyrical yet impassioned interpretation" (Fanfare Magazine), he has been a featured performer at the Eastern Music Festival and Texas Music Festival, and Serafin Summer Music and Master Players Festival, and performs annually at the Techne Music Festival. Currently a member of the Philadelphia-based mixed ensemble, The Halcyon Consort, he served thirteen years as the cellist of the acclaimed Serafin String Quartet, having toured around the United States. Stomberg is invested in presenting the music of the old masters, including recent performances of the cycle of the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello of J.S. Bach and the complete Cello and Piano works of Beethoven, as well as bringing new works and compositional voices to life, with recent and upcoming premiers and commissions of solo, sonata, chamber, and concerto works by composers Kirk O'Riordan, David Osbon, Richard Prior, Mazz Swift, Alisa Rose, and Ketty Nez. Concerts have taken him across four continents, with recent solo and chamber music performances in the cities of London, Vienna, Bogotá, as well as across the United States. He has recorded for the Centaur, Naxos, Albany, Ravello, and VAI labels.

As a recipient of the 2018 Delaware Division of the Arts Established Artist Fellowship, Stomberg turned much his performance activity to musical outreach and community engagement through his project, Bach in Wilmington, which paired the six Suites for Solo Cello of J.S. Bach with recorded interviews of residents of Wilmington, Delaware (his current home), and commissioned works responding both to Bach and Wilmington, by violinists and crossover artists Mazz Swift and Alisa Rose. This work continues, with continuing performance and teaching artist appearances in community centers, churches, food pantries, and re-entry programs around the city, and an online video series through Ankos Films.

Stomberg is a busy and dedicated pedagogue, having served on the faculties at Truman State University in Missouri and Oklahoma State University before joining the music faculty at the University of Delaware School of Music in 2004, where he is currently Professor of Cello and Associate Director for Performance Studies. He is a frequent guest at schools across the United States and abroad giving cello and chamber music masterclasses, and finds the work of teaching a vital companion to that of performing.

Lawrence Stomberg lives in Wilmington, Delaware with his wife, cellist and pedagogue Jennifer Crowell Stomberg. They have three adult children, as well as an animal menagerie of three cats, a dog, and a turtle.​​