In October, Virginia Commonwealth University honored the impactful teaching legacy of Sonia Vlahcevic, Ph.D., professor of piano and music analysis, by naming the Sonia Vlahcevic Recital Hall in the James W. Black Music Center. Vlahcevic will retire at the end of this year.
Vlahcevic joined the faculty of the Richmond Professional Institute in 1966, two years before the school merged with the Medical College of Virginia to form VCU. Before coming to VCUarts, she held faculty appointments at New England Conservatory and at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her research interests include contemporary music compositions for the piano, and how and why to perform these new pianistic techniques.
An internationally celebrated pianist, she has performed lecture-recitals at international venues in Spain, Thailand, Malaysia, Argentina, Croatia, South Korea, Sweden, and Australia, all through the College Music Society. She also performed at venues around the U.S., including more than a dozen faculty recitals at VCU.
In addition to teaching and performing, Vlahcevic is involved with the Richmond Music Teachers Association (RMTA), through which she created the Vlahcevic Contemporary Music Festival in 2021. The festival featured workshops that exposed teachers to repertoire and techniques for teaching contemporary music. Student participants learned a contemporary piece, which they performed without competition or evaluation, but instead as a celebration of their growth as musicians.
Vlahcevic received her Ph.D. in music theory from the Catholic University of America. She also holds a Masters in Piano Pedagogy and a Bachelor of Music with a concentration in Piano performance from New England Conservatory in Boston.