Stephen Michael Newby currently holds The Lev H. Prichard III Endowed Chair in the Study of Black Worship and Professor of Music and serves as Ambassador for The Black Gospel Music Preservation Program at Baylor University. He formerly served as Minister of Worship at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, GA, as Director for the Center for African American Worship studies at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, TN. He held a tenured Professor of Music post at Seattle Pacific University, where he also served as Director of University Ministries, Director for the Center for Worship, and Senior Advisor to the University President for Missional Excellence.
He has more than three decades of University level teaching and administration to his credit. He is a native of Detroit, Michigan, and received his Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Music Education from Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan. He received a Master of Music in Jazz Composition and Arranging from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He returned to Michigan to complete his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and served as an Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Computer Arts. He received his Master of Arts in Theology from Seattle Pacific Seminary.
For more than 35 years, he has served in various church music ministries in Michigan, Massachusetts, Washington, California and Georgia. His voice and works have earned awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (Continental Harmony Grant), the King County Arts Commission of Washington, The Rackham School Fellowship for Ethnomusicological Research in Dakar, Senegal, and the John Wesley Work III National Composers’ Award. For more than nine years, he served as national anthem conductor for the Seattle Sounders FC. He created concert music for The Cascade Youth Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, Canton Symphony Orchestra, New Haven Symphony, Savannah Symphony, and the New World Theater Orchestra, among others. His concert music works are recorded by Albany Records. His gospel music works are recorded and published by Maranatha Music and Newby’s Witness Music. His scholarly works are published by Rowman & Littlefield, and his worship and praise choral compositions are published by Fred Bock. He co-authored with Robert Darden, Baylor University’s Emeritus Professor of Journalism, the book, Soon & Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andrae Crouch, released with Oxford University Press.