Growing up in Visitacion Valley — a working-class neighborhood in San Francisco — Dr. Tiffany Ng developed an early interest in music, though she had never actually planned to be a musical performer.
“I begged my family for music lessons since I was maybe four years old, but they didn’t have enough money to start me on piano until I was almost 10,” says Ng, the daughter of economic migrants from Hong Kong and China, who now teaches carillon at the University of Michigan, where she also serves as the university carillonist. “The fact that I almost missed the chance to study music is another reason I’m committed to creating more equal opportunities for University of Michigan students of all socioeconomic backgrounds to study carillon with me.”
Ng, 34, is a rising superstar within the academy.
As an assistant professor who arrived at Michigan in 2015, Ng has carved out a reputation as both a master teacher of carillon and an international performer of the rare 12-ton instrument that has at least 23 bells, is usually housed in a tower and is played from a keyboard and pedalboard.
Although international interest in the carillon is clearly on the rise — evident in the fact that Michigan is the only institution in the world that offers a master’s degree to study the instrument — there are only about 180 carillons in North America and about 600 in the entire world. And many Americans are not particularly familiar with the instrument.
Still, the rising fascination with the carillon is encouraging, says Ng, who has been on a mission to encourage more minorities to take up the study of the instrument since she was encouraged to study it as a student at Yale University. She has since witnessed an influx of East Asian female students, “who see me as a mentor and really want to connect with me,” she says.
Studying carillon historically has been reserved for the more privileged. Even at Michigan, students have to pay an extra course fee for the private one-on-one lessons they have with Ng.
