News/Research

Tiffany Ng to be University of Michigan Carilloneur

11 Mar, 2015

Tiffany Ng to be University of Michigan Carilloneur

Tiffany Ng has accepted a tenure-track position as University carilloneur at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. She is Visiting Instructor of Music History at St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology with a Designated Emphasis in New Media at UC Berkeley.

Her research focuses on the politics of musical sound -- the carillon in particular -- in public spaces, and its relationship to identity construction, asymmetrical power relations, economies of death and memorialization, schizophonia and disembodiment in live and playback performance, the historical performance practice movement, and the exploration of these issues through supernatural and violent narratives in film, opera, and literature. Her secondary intersts include film music/sound and the digital baroque, opera stagings incorporating new media, and the relationship of recorded sound and visual culture. She is writing her dissertation with the guidance of Richard Taruskin and Steven Feld.

Tiffany earned an M.M. in Organ Performance & Literature from the Eastman School of Music in 2008, where she studied with William Porter. An energetic proponent of new music, she has commissioned and premiered over a dozen acoustic and electroacoustic works for carillon and for organ, and revived carillon pieces by Kaikhosru Sorabji and Robert Morris. On a fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation, she studied with Geert D'hollander at the Royal Carillon School "Jef Denyn" in Belgium and graduated magna cum laude in 2006. She earned a B.A. in English and Music at Yale, where she managed belfry renovations and preparations for the 2006 congress of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. Tiffany has curated exhibits at the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments and at the Municipal Museum of Mechelen, Belgium.

In summer 2012, she was awarded a New Media Summer Research Fellowship to conduct research in Eindhoven at the Philips Archives, the Louis Kalff Institute of the Regional History Center Eindhoven (RHCe), and the Eindhoven Central Library, as well as the Dutch Graphic Designers Archives (NAGO) in Amsterdam. At the 23rd International Carillon Festival, Tiffany performed electroacoustic carillon works (using 60 bells, 16 loudspeakers, and 2 subwoofers) by Jay Cloidt, Paul Coleman, Matthew Barber, and Kevin Ernste at the 22nd International Carillon Festival at Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, FL. In 2014, she collaborated with Cesar Torres and BCNM Board member Perrin Meyer on Sarah Stierch's Susan B. Miller Fellowship project Hack the Bells, which was the world's first remix competition for carillon. In the Tidal Bells project, she collaborated with Greg Niemeyer, allowing users to ring the bells of Carillons to mark sea levels near the bell tower.

Some of her carillon performances may be found on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/carillonista.

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