Victor Santiago Asuncion

Pianist Victor Santiago Asuncion has racked up a number of high-profile chamber music partners in performance and on recordings. He launched the FilAm Music Foundation to promote Filipino classical artists in the U.S. Asuncion (the name is Filipino and has no accent mark) was born in the Philippines around 1973; he gave his age as 45 in a 2018 interview with The FilAm magazine. He attended the Philippine High School for the Arts, a specialized institution created by former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos. Asuncion was one of five siblings, all of whom were musical. His father, often working in the Middle East, discouraged their musical ambitions, but his mother supported his dreams. Asuncion did well in school and, after graduating, found himself in demand as an accompanist for singers and orchestras in the Philippines. He made his classical debut in a concert with the Manila Chamber Orchestra when he was 18. In 1993, he accompanied the Philippine Madrigal Singers on a U.S. tour, and its director, Andrea Veneracion, suggested that he was stagnating in the Philippines and should consider moving to the U.S. Asuncion accepted the suggestion and enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, receiving a master's degree in piano performance there in 1999. That year, he also appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York, helped by a Filipino-American family named Jongco, who promoted his career and sold tickets to his concerts. Asuncion went on for a doctorate at the University of Maryland, where his principal teacher was Rita Sloan. He received his degree in 2007. Asuncion has been especially well known as an accompanist, and it was in that capacity that he made his recording debut in 2012, backing cellist Joseph Johnson in cello sonatas by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich. He has performed chamber music with major artists such as cellists Lynn Harrell, Antonio Meneses, and Zuill Bailey, and violinist Cho-Liang Lin. For three seasons, he was a member of the Garth Newel Piano Quartet and served on the chamber music faculty of its summer festival as well as that of the Aspen Music Festival. He is also a solo artist who has appeared in several countries, with conductors including Mei-Ann Chen, Zeev Dorman, and crossover vocalist Bobby McFerrin. Asuncion has appeared at leading U.S. festivals, including the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival in Florida, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Music in the Vineyards in northern California. In 2021, he backed cellist John-Henry Crawford on the Orchid Classics album Dialogo, and he and Crawford returned in 2023 on Orchid Classics with Voice of Rachmaninoff.
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