Elizabeth Suderburg

Elizabeth Marie Suderburg was an American soprano, performer and recording artist. She was born on April 3, 1933 in Friestadt, Wisconsin outside of Milwaukee and died on January 17, 2020 in Los Angeles. She was the youngest of the eight children of Erich Pipkorn and Lydia Ernst. She was raised in poverty on a farm during the great depression. When the farm failed the family moved into the city. She sang as a child in church and throughout high school at every wedding or funeral she could. If you knew her you knew that she lived for music. This was for her the greatest feeling of being alive and communicating across language and time. She started in church where she got her foundation and her life as a singer took her to many places and taught her many things. She was generous teacher and performer.

She gave recitals in high school and her vocal talent was rewarded when she won a Metropolitan Opera audition. Suderburg attended a year of Lutheran College and then the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis where she met and married composer Robert Suderburg. She was an organ student of Paul Manz and but decided to devote her life to the vocal repertoire of living composers, German Lieder and 20th century modernist music. Many lifelong projects occupied her one of which was to collect, notate, research and sing Native American Songs of the Pacific Northwest where she became a song catcher and student with tribal approval. This became an Americana album of popular song from Stephen Foster to Charles Ives called American Sampler. She was dedicated to First Nations inclusion as part of her work compiling an American songbook and was one of the first contemporary classical performers to do this.