Dr. Nicole Cherry is Assistant Professor of Violin at The University of Texas at San Antonio and second violinist of the award-winning Marian Anderson String Quartet. Based in Texas for nearly twenty years, Nicole has held artist-teacher residencies at Texas A&M, Prairie View A&M, University of Washington, and Brown University where she, with the quartet, trained promising string players of all ages. Nicole has performed extensively in distinguished venues including the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian, and the Banff Centre. A solo tour of the Middle East and Asia included performances before the Queen Noor of Jordan and in underdeveloped townships in Johannesburg during Apartheid.
She served as artistic director of the Marian Anderson String Quartet Chamber Music Institute held in the underserved areas of Brazos Valley, Texas, and St.Thomas, Virgin Islands. In recognition of this outreach with the quartet, garnered two Mayoral Proclamations, the Congress of Racial Equality’s MLK JR. Award for Outstanding Arts Achievement and Chamber Music America’s Guarneri String Quartet Award. Nicole has given a TED Talk on string education and presented for Texas Music Educators Association, American String Teacher’s Association, Chamber Music America, and the Texas Touring Roster.
Nicole’s doctoral research on the nineteenth-century Afro-European violin virtuoso, George Bridgetower, which explores historical socio-cultural theories in string music led to interviews on Lubbock, Texas’ PBS stations, and awards that include Texas Tech University’s Paul Whitfield Horn Award and the President’s Excellence in Diversity and Equity Award. As a graduate of the Masters degree program, The Juilliard School profiled Nicole in the Journal’s 100th-anniversary issue, “A Quiet Revolution: Juilliard Alumni and the Transformation of Education in America Through the Arts.”
