Rate My Professor Miriam Webber

Miriam Webber, PhD, serves as Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Honors Program at Bemidji State University. Her academic background includes a PhD from the University of Kansas, where her dissertation examined narrative processes within Dmitri Shostakovich’s works in relation to Soviet literary theory. She earned a Master of Music in Music Theory from the University of Kansas, analyzing late Shostakovich works through post-tonal and Tonnetz-based methodologies in her master’s thesis; a Master of Music in Bassoon Performance from McGill University; and a Bachelor of Music in Bassoon Performance from Ball State University. Research specializations include music theory, particularly Shostakovich studies incorporating Bakhtinian concepts, as well as emotion, pedagogy, and performance studies. She has presented papers at university events and international conferences and published an article in The Double Reed, journal of the International Double Reed Society. A forthcoming book, Bakhtin and the Music of Dmitri Shostakovich: Analysis as Dialogue (Routledge, 2026), applies Bakhtin’s literary thought—such as carnival, chronotope, heteroglossia, polyphony, and novelization—to Shostakovich’s music across songs, operas, and symphonies.

Dr. Webber joined Bemidji State University in 2016. She is principal bassoonist of the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra and Heartland Symphony Orchestra, with performances alongside the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, Fargo Moorhead Opera, Northern Lights Music Festival Orchestra, Sinfonietta Memphis, Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, Muncie Symphony Orchestra, Kokomo Symphony Orchestra, Southeast Kansas Symphony Orchestra, Fort Hays Symphony Orchestra, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, St. Joseph Symphony Orchestra, and Springfield-Drury Civic Orchestras. In 2019, she co-founded the Silent Voices Project to promote women and non-binary composers through commissions, publications, performances, and recordings of chamber woodwind music, premiering works at conferences hosted by the International Double Reed Society, International Clarinet Association, Music By Women, and SHE: Festival of Women in Music. She received the Region 2 Arts Council Artist Fellowship for 2022–2023, recognizing her substantial body of independent work.