Fred Vasquez, M.M., MAT., recently retired after a long career as a music teacher at Newtown High School. He is a classical guitarist, music historian, and arranger with a passionate love for the Virgin Mary. Together with his wife, Vita, he started a website called Vita & Fred Guitar Poems. Here, they offer mostly sacred poems accompanied by the classical guitar to Jesus, the Blessed Mother, and the saints. Their aim is to evangelize and to show different aspects of reading scripture, specifically the poetic and musical aspects.

He has been playing the guitar since age ten. He has played all the major guitar styles, from Rock to Jazz. However, the Classical Guitar style was and continues to be his first love.

As a classical guitar soloist, he performed at many notable venues, including the United Nations, Carnegie Recital Hall, Lincoln Center Recital Hall, and Bargemusic, where he performed for the Classical Guitar Society of Brooklyn.

Throughout the 1980s, Fred made a series of concert tours throughout Peru, the country of his father's birth.

When in college, he studied with world-renowned music teachers while earning his Masters Degree. He also did three years of doctoral work in Latin American music history at Stony Brook (S.U.N.Y.).

Fred was an Adjunct Lecturer at LaGuardia Community College, where he taught music history to high school students for college credit. He also taught at the Brooklyn College Preparatory Center for the Performing Arts and at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.

However, it was as a high school music teacher, teaching teenagers for many years the beauty and value of music and the classical guitar, that Fred achieved a legendary status among his students, colleagues, and the community.

Fred recently retired from Newtown High School, where he formed an award-winning classical guitar program. He and his students made a number of classical guitar documentaries for Queens Public Television. He was cited for exemplary teaching and community service by NYS Senator Jose Peralta, Univision, and the 110th Precinct.

Fred has commissioned new sacred guitar works from notable international composers with the intention of increasing the repertoire of sacred music for the classical guitar.

Fred has taken his vast knowledge and experience in music and the classical guitar and has now directed it to Jesus and the Virgin Mary in a ministry that he and his wife, Vita, call "Guitar Poems.”

Fred is a lector at his church and taught classical guitar in a local Queens Catholic Church.