Get to know our guitar instructors! Scroll down to read each instructor’s background and biography and choose the teacher that best fits your needs.
Vicki Suzanne Rasco “Suzi,” is an award-winning music educator. She has been teaching for 28 years and continues to perform in church and local venues. After graduating from Florida Southern College with a degree in Vocal Performance, she became a performer at Walt Disney World. She has taught piano, flute, violin, guitar, and voice during her years of private teaching and middle school chorus, elementary music, group piano, group guitar and music theatre as a music educator. She is certified in Music K-12, Elementary Education K-6 and ESOL Endorsed.
My musical journey began at the early age of 12 years old in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This period of my life
was a mixture of affable after-school experiences that started with me running through my living room
to take over the remote control and turn on the family TV to watch the new rock music videos.
After I finished my homework, I would go with my neighborhood friends to the mall to buy the latest
rock albums I was interested in. At the end of my day, I’d play the songs on my CD player over and over
again to try to recreate the sounds through my own brand-new electric guitar. My final plan was to start
my own punk-rock band.
At 13 years old my dream came true and I started my own band with my school and neighborhood
friends. Those friends became my family and our songs were a channel to connect with my own voice
and spirituality. The next year, I got into high school which led me to study music theory while navigating
other genres besides rock.
In the course of my senior year, the music teachers, Waldo Ortiz, and Joey Carmona guided me
throughout the whole preparation process for auditions at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. I
was finally accepted into the Classical Guitar program. And this was the beginning of a new way of life for
me as an official classical guitar pupil.
This phase was paramount in my formative period because I was finally the student of one of the top
professors in the Caribbean region, Luis Enrique Juliá. The Latin Grammy Winner professor taught me the
language and foundation of classical guitar performance, proper left-hand and right-hand relaxation
techniques, posture, phrasing and rhythm development, repertoire preparation for recitals, and
performance development.
After four years of hard work, I graduated Cum Laude from the Classical Guitar program and immediately
started a new journey teaching children while building a personal and experimental repertoire rooted on
the basis of healing cultural and family trauma through music. On the other hand, I composed music for
theater plays, action films, documentaries, and street performances.
In 2010, I started a new job position as a guitar teacher for the after-school program in Tasis, Dorado. I
developed my main skills as a teacher for kids and teenagers in this institution. I taught children from
ages 6 to 12 and teenagers from ages 13 to 17. During this period I helped them to use their own voice
through music, practice, and discipline. When the semester came to an end, the students manifested
their knowledge through fun and creative recitals.
After Hurricane María struck the island, I decided to leave my job position and start a new life in
California. I founded my project Live Sounds -Healing Through Music- with my colleague, Camila Frías.
The project brought a breath of fresh air to my life because I mixed nature, live music, and meditation
into one product. I built a plethora of “in-nature” videos with my own compositions and pieces by
different authors like Bach, Fernando Sol, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. Yet, life had another chapter for me and
after the pandemic ended I decided to move back to Florida. I waited a whole year preparing for this trip
until I made it back to my family and roots.
Quote
“Learning and teaching music is like a dance of cultural webs made of knowledge, humility, practice, and communication. What I love about teaching music is how a whole universe within each student can be manifested through a simple musical note”
28 years of playing electric guitar and electric bass.
20 years of classical guitar training.
10 years of audio recording.
Bachelor’s Degree in Classical Guitar Performance from The Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico.
Bilingual in English and Spanish.