​​Violinist Tiffany Tieu is a versatile performer, educator, and teaching artist who is dedicated to using music to bring communities, youth, and cultures together around the world. Equally at home on stage and in the classroom, her teaching and performing as a soloist, orchestral musician, and chamber musician has brought her to over a dozen countries across the Americas. She has been a guest teaching artist with youth orchestras, music schools, and conservatories in Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and extensively in the United States. As a graduate of the YOA Global Leaders Program, Tiffany has received hands-on training with the world's leading social entrepreneurs, arts educators, and El Sistema programs. She draws on her own multicultural heritage and extensive travels throughout Latin America to share and create meaningful cultural connections through music programs and performances. Her dedication to music education as a means for cultural exchange has been recognized with grants from the Nichols Humanitarian Fund, The CIM Women's Committee, the U.S. Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, and the Ryuji Ueno Foundation.
 
A dedicated educator, Tiffany completed her long-term Suzuki Violin training with Kimberly Meier-Sims at the Sato Center for Suzuki Studies. Chief among her interests is using music education to empower youth from diverse communities, giving young students the tools and skills they need to become independent musicians and active citizens in their own communities. She has been on the music faculty of the Rainey Institute, W.O. Smith Community Music School, The Cleveland School of the Arts, and the Interlochen Arts Camp. Appearances at international music festivals include the Spoleto Festival USA, YOA Orchestra of the Americas, and the Aspen Music Festival. In 2013 and 2014 she was a featured teacher and soloist at the Festival Internacional de Música en Loja, Ecuador. She has appeared as soloist with the Vanderbilt University Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Loja, and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Loja. As an orchestral player, Ms. Tieu appears frequently with the Akron Symphony, IRIS Orchestra, and the Canton Symphony and has played as Assistant Concertmaster of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Santiago. In Spring of 2015 she was invited to be a member of the Evermay Chamber Orchestra for their historic collaboration with the Washington Ballet featuring Misty Copeland in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
 
Tiffany has many diverse interests within and beyond the music world, and has a strong connection both to Asia and Latin America. In addition to her music studies, she pursued a major in Spanish and Latin American Studies, and her Honors thesis on Octavio Paz and Orientalism received highest honors. While studying at Vanderbilt University she was awarded the Jean Keller Heard String Prize and the Music in the Community Prize, and was a Cornelius Vanderbilt Scholar. In 2012 she was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to Ecuador, where she was a faculty member at the Universidad Nacional de Loja and guest violinist with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Loja. Recent collaborations include lectures and performances at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, recitals at the Crane House in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and performances with singer Abigail Washburn and fiddler Bruce Molsk. Major teachers include Carolyn Huebl, William Preucil, Oliver Steiner, Cornelia Heard, and Paul Kantor. Tiffany is currently the Artist-in-Residence at Judson Manor, a retirement community in Cleveland, OH which hosts the only intergenerational residential arts program in the United States. She plays a 1769 Joseph Gagliano violin kindly on loan from the S&R Foundation in Washington, DC.