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. Dr. Cherry 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. Dr. Cherry 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.

​

Dr. Cherry served as artistic director of the Marian Anderson String Quartet Chamber Music Institute held in the underserved areas of Brazos Valley, Texas. In recognition of this outreach with the quartet, Dr. Cherry 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. A regular presenter on diversity and music, Dr. Cherry has given talks at the some of the leading arts conferences as well a TED Talk on community engagement and music.

Dr. Cherry’s research on the nineteenth-century Afro-European violin virtuoso, George Bridgetower, which explores historical socio-cultural theories in music has led to interviews worldwide and awards that include Texas Tech University’s coveted Paul Whitfield Horn Award and the President’s Excellence in Diversity and Equity Award.  Her work has expanded into a commissioning project, ForgewithGeorge which has engaged some of today’s most exciting composers. The Juilliard School profiled Dr. Cherry in the Journal’s 100th-anniversary issue, “A Quiet Revolution: Juilliard Alumni and the Transformation of Education in America Through the Arts.”