Carillonista

Tiffany Ng is associate professor of carillon at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and chair of the Department of Organ. An advocate of diversity in new music, she has premiered over 60 pieces by composers from Augusta Read Thomas to Yvette Janine Jackson, pioneered models for interactive “crowdsourced” carillon performances and environmental-data-driven sound installations with Greg Niemeyer, Chris Chafe, Ed Campion, Ken Goldberg, John Granzow, and Laura Steenberge, and through her composer collaborations significantly increased the American repertoire for carillon and electronics. Her concert career has taken her to festivals in 17 countries in Europe, Australia, Asia, and North America, including the 2022 CICO Festival in Portugal, 2020 Canberra International Music Festival, 2018 University of Chicago Rockefeller Carillon New Music Festival, 2018 Canberra Carillon Festival, 2017 University of Michigan Bicentennial, 2015 UC Berkeley Campanile Centennial, 2014 Stanford CCRMA anniversary festival, the 23rd International Carillon Festival at Bok Tower Gardens, Florida, the 2014 International Carillon Festival Barcelona, and the 2008 Post-Congress Festival of the World Carillon Federation. She has taught masterclasses at Yale University, the Eastman School of Music, Wellesley College, the University of Chicago, the University of Toronto, the University of Texas at Austin, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, and the Mayo Clinic. At U-M, she is a faculty affiliate in the Digital Studies Institute.

Ng’s previous positions include visiting professor of music history at St. Olaf College, associate carillonist at the University of California, Berkeley, and instructor of carillon at the University of Rochester. Her musicology dissertation, “The Heritage of the Future: Historical Keyboards, Technology, and Modernism,” explores the carillon and organ in terms of music technology, the Early Music movement, and the Cold War in America and the Netherlands, drawing on media studies, urban planning, legal history, and the history of military electronics to reevaluate the Organ Reform Movement and the postwar use of carillons as diplomatic and urban planning technologies.

Ng holds a licentiate diploma magna cum laude from the Royal Carillon School “Jef Denyn” where she studied with Geert D’hollander; a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley where she studied with Richard Taruskin (musicology and new media); a master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with William Porter (organ); and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University (English and music). She is former assistant director of the Women in Music Festival and the Contemporary Organ Music Festival in Rochester, New York; author of the multimedia catalog of the Municipal Carillon Museum of Mechelen, Belgium; and former curator of a special exhibit of bells at the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments.

Ng’s awards include the University of Michigan's Henry Russel Award, the Institute for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, the Shirley Verrett Award for service to women of color in the arts, the Ronald Barnes Memorial Scholarship for Carillon Studies, the E. Power Biggs Fellowship of the Organ Historical Society, the Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellowship, the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center Fellowship, the Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies paper award, and the Belgian American Educational Foundation Fellowship.

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