| Philippine-born Victoria Bragin, currently Music Artist in Residence at the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia, was first prize co-winner of the 2002 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, a competition for individuals 35 years or older who do not earn their principal living as either a pianist or piano teacher. With graduate degrees in both music and chemistry, she has returned to music as a career after spending most of her professional life in chemical education: as chemistry professor at Pasadena City College in California and then as program director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA. Even while working in chemical education, she has continued to perform extensively as a soloist as well as chamber musician in the West and East Coasts, including a performance to a sold-out audience in the Marion & Gustave Ring Auditorium of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. In the US, she has studied at the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of South Carolina. Her principal teachers in the US include Aiko Onishi, Frank Mannheimer, Lillian Steuber, James Bonn, and John Kenneth Adams.
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