Retired VCU music professor Sonia Vlahcevic
Sonia Vlahcevic’s birth certificate may indicate that she’s 91, but the former Virginia Commonwealth University professor thinks and acts like she’s still 18. She says her positive, young-at-heart mindset has given her the ability and drive to accomplish more than she ever imagined possible.
Vlahcevic recently retired after more than 60 years as a professor of piano and music analysis. A native of Massachusetts, she taught at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Cleveland Institute of Music before joining the faculty at VCU.
As a child, Vlahcevic was intent on becoming a ballerina. She studied ballet until age 16 but then shifted her focus to music and persuaded her mother to buy a piano for their home so she could practice.
It was a big ask. Her parents were Polish immigrants of modest means — but they believed in supporting their children’s ventures. “My parents made wonderful lives for their children,” says Vlahcevic, the youngest of six.
As a student at NEC, Vlahcevic practiced piano four to five hours a day. “I would get there before the janitors opened the building,” she recalls. She earned a bachelor’s degree in music with a concentration in piano performance and a master’s in piano pedagogy from the conservatory, as well as a doctorate in music theory from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
She remembers how honored she was when conservatory officials asked her to play the piano for the school’s grand recital in 1960. But more than that, she remembers meeting Z. Reno Vlahcevic, a doctor who became her husband after a monthlong whirlwind romance.
The couple moved to Richmond when Reno accepted a position with the Medical College of Virginia (now VCU Health) in the mid 1960s. He served as the chairman of VCU’s division of gastroenterology before his death in 2000. Vlahcevic herself began teaching at Richmond Professional Institute in 1966; two years later, it merged with MCV to form VCU.
The university gave Vlahcevic the opportunity to create her own courses in contemporary music, her field of study. She used a method she credits to one of her conservatory instructors, who introduced her to creativity and expression in music by teaching technique without requiring her to follow patterns.
The experience, Vlahcevic explains, “[expanded] my musical mind. Study was so tedious, but I had to understand what every note was doing.” She adds that she would do as the teacher wished, “but then take it and create my interpretation of it. She gave me the benefit of feeling I was making the music and not just reading the score.”
Vlahcevic used the same approach when she created the Vlahcevic Contemporary Music Festival in 2021 with the Richmond Music Teachers Association. She held workshops for teachers and taught participating students to learn and perform a contemporary piece. The festival was a celebration of skill and musical growth, she says, not a competition.
“The children had fun. Their parents told me how much they enjoyed doing it. That tells me they were playing their piece, not notes from Bach or Mozart, but their piece,” she says, noting that she finds working with children extremely rewarding.
Vlahcevic at the piano
Marina Andueza, current president of the RMTA, earned a master’s degree in piano performance at VCU, where she first met Vlahcevic in 1996. “From our very first lessons, I realized I had found not only an exceptional teacher but also a mentor who would profoundly influence my musical and personal life,” Andueza says. “What began as a student-teacher relationship gradually became a lasting friendship built on deep respect and admiration.”
According to Andueza, Vlahcevic always encouraged her students to find their artistic voices. She remembers preparing her graduate recital in 1998. “I asked if I could include works by Venezuelan composers alongside the traditional piano repertoire,” says Andueza, a native of Caracas, Venezuela. “Without hesitation, [Vlahcevic] embraced the idea. That openness meant the world to me. She taught me that great artistry honors tradition while welcoming new perspectives and cultures.”
Experiencing many of those cultures firsthand led Vlahcevic to another of her passions: travel. Attending Reno’s medical conferences took her around the world, as did her own affiliation and performances with The College Music Society.
“Every time I would travel with my husband, I would bring back an instrument,” she says. “It reminded me what good times we had.” She chose small instruments that were native to the countries she visited and displayed many of them in her studio. An Australian didgeridoo is one of her favorites.
Vlahcevic is proud of her accomplishments and honors, which include the naming of the VCUarts recital hall, part of the James W. Black Music Center, in her honor last October. “It was extraordinary for me, a girl that came from an average family and grew up in a small town, to become a doctor of musical analysis,” she says. “That has never left me. I came from zero, but I am an achiever.”
Andueza says one of the greatest lessons she learned from Vlahcevic is to remain open to new music, new ideas and new possibilities. “She taught me that excellence and curiosity go hand in hand,” adding that Vlahcevic “is one of those rare individuals whose legacy will continue to shape generations of musicians long into the future.”
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