UPCOMING PERFORMANCES:
April 2025, St. George's Episcopal Church, Arlington, VA
Works by Judith Cloud. With soprano Polly Baldridge
November 15, 2024, Chevy Chase Women's Club, Chevy Chase, MD
Works by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Tanya Leon
November 7, 2024, Strathmore Mansion, Bethesda, MD
With cellist Val Matthews
November 1, 2024, St. George's Episcopal Church, Arlington, VA
Works by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Tanya Leon
October 11, 2024, Holiday Park Senior Center, Wheaton, MD
Presentation on women composers of color
March 17, 2024, Music at Midwood (A House Concert)
Works by Robert Schumann and Rebecca Clarke (with violinist Reed Trevelyan and cellist Val Matthews)
March 2024, Live @ 10th & G, Washington, DC
Rebecca Clarke, Piano Trio, with Reed Trevelyan, violin, and Val Matthews, cello.
March 2024, Strathmore Mansion, Bethesda, MD
Lieder on Goethe Texts (by Josephine Lang and Franz Schubert)
With Polly Baldridge, soprano
Sept 2023, Live @ 10th & G, Washington, DC
Lieder on Goethe Texts (by Josephine Lang and Franz Schubert)
With Polly Baldridge, soprano
April 2023, Live @ 10th & G, Washington, DC
Rebecca Clarke, Sonata for Viola and Piano, with Susan Russo
Philippine-born VICTORIA MACALALAD BRAGIN was the first woman and, so far, the only woman to win first prize in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, a competition for pianists 35 years or older who do not earn their principal living from piano performance or piano teaching. In this first competition that she'd ever entered at the time (2002), Bragin also won the Audience Award and the awards for Best Performance of a Work from the Romantic Era and Best Performance of a Modern Work. Just about ready to retire, she bested competitors who were at least two decades younger than she was. She was also a prize winner in the Chicago Amateur Piano Competition, the International Fryderyk Chopin Competition for Amateur Pianists in Warsaw, and the International Amateur Piano Competition in Berlin.
Except for a brief appointment on the piano and music theory faculty at the School of Music of the University of South Carolina, all of Ms. Bragin's professional life has been in science education. She came to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in physical chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She taught pre-college math, chemistry, and physics both in the Philippines and in the US before becoming chemistry professor at Pasadena City College (PCC) in California. She later served a two-year stint as Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education of the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, managing projects involving digital libraries, curriculum development and lab improvements, and advanced technological education, among others.
Shortly after the Amateur Cliburn competition, she was invited to be the first Music Artist-in-Residence at the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia, a position specifically created for her by the enterprising and then new Executive Director, Margaret Mary Layne. In this capacity she performed as well as organized and produced concerts in conjunction with Museum exhibits. These concerts helped attract increasing numbers of attendees to Museum events. ...
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