Acclaimed as a pianist of “intelligent ardor and exceptionally clear and bright technique” (The Santa Barbara News Press), Jerico Vasquez has performed as concerto soloist, as a recitalist, and as a chamber musician in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Philippines.

He received his Bachelor of Music degree under Dr. Charles Asche at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Piano Performance, with a Minor in Music History and Literature, in the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston under Ruth Tomfohrde, Abbey Simon and Horacio Gutiérrez. Before coming to Shorter University he taught at the Moores School of Music, as well as the University of Houston, Downtown.

Dr. Vasquez has been a winner of the UCSB Concerto Competition and has received career grants from the Pillsbury Foundation, the Santa Barbara Performing Arts Foundation, and the Léni Fe Bland Foundation. He was also a recipient of Ojai Festival’s prestigious Charlotte and Alvin Bronstein Award, Capitol Record’s Nat King Cole Memorial Award, and the University of California Regents Scholarship. He is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honorary Society.

As a pedagogue, Dr. Vasquez has been an active member of the Music Teachers National Association. He has served as President of the Houston Music Teachers Association and the Bayou City Federated Music Club. His students have won prizes from several competitions, including the HMTA/HYAC Concerto Competition, the Blinn College Young Pianist Competition, the GMTA Competitions, and the Chopin International Youth Competition.

VICTORIA FISCHER FAW received her musical education at Centenary College of Louisiana (B.M. in piano performance), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (M.A. in musicology), the University of Texas at Austin (M.M. and D.M.A. in piano performance), and the Vienna Conservatory in Vienna, Austria (Rotary Foundation Fellowship). She pursues an active career as performer, scholar, teacher and adjudicator, with activities in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, Italy, Hungary, England, Greece, Germany, Austria, and Belize. Now in her twenty-first year on the music faculty at Elon University, she has also served as Visiting Professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and the University of Belize.

In addition to performing and teaching a varied repertoire of the standard keyboard literature, Dr. Fischer specializes in the music of Béla Bartók. A first-prize winner of the Bartók-Kabalevsky International Piano Competition, and recipient of the 2004 Regional Artist Award of the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, she is in demand as a performer, scholar and clinician. She is the author of a number of publications, including Bartók Perspectives (Oxford University Press), edited with Elliott Antokoletz and Benjamin Suchoff, a chapter contributed to A Bartók Companion (Cambridge University Press) and an article in the 2006 volume of The International Journal of Musicology. Her activities at Elon include teaching piano, music history, and piano pedagogy, and directorship of international study programs to Greece, Italy, London and Belize. Professional activities so far in 2010 include a lecture recital “A Mere Bagatelle” to the High Point Music Teachers Association; coordination and performer in an Elon University Fund for Excellence Symposium “Music and Art as Voice of the African Diaspora;” featured guest artist, clinician and adjudicator at the Southeastern Community College Piano Festival in Whiteville, NC; performances with soprano Polly Cornelius of “A Recital of American Music” in Umbria and Tuscany, Italy, and with her chamber ensemble The Pheonix Piano Trio in North Carolina, including Alleghany County. She speaks fluent German and wishes she spoke better Italian. When not at Elon, she lives with husband Stephen Faw in Alleghany County.