Ms. Hisami Iijima

Ms. Hisami Iijima is the founder and Director of the Suzuki Violin Studios, a Suzuki Violin program located in North Phoenix & North Scottsdale, AZ. She was raised with the Suzuki Method in Japan from age 3 and has over 20 years of teaching experience privately as well as a faculty member at the leading music schools like Long Island Conservatory in NY, Florentine Music Center in NYC, Louisiana Academy of Performing Arts in LA, and most recently at the Arizona School for the Arts in Phoenix, AZ. She was also a violin instructor for the One Nation Program, a unique musical partnership between the Phoenix Symphony and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community through a year long residency program that offers private and group music lessons and performances at the community’s elementary school and high school. Currently she is part of a team who coaches high school orchestras in Paradise Valley School district, an outreach program through Paradise Valley Community College.

As a Suzuki teacher, she has taught at the Greater New Orleans Suzuki Music Camp and Fall Suzuki workshop by the Arizona Suzuki Association. She has been producing students who have won the concertmaster and principal chairs in the Phoenix Youth Symphony, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, West Valley Youth Symphony, as well as All-State and Regional Orchestras. Her Suzuki training has included courses with Mark Bjork, Lorraine Fink, Linda Fiore, Michelle Higa George, Mary Cay Neal, and Doris Preucil.

Ms. Iijima made New York debut recital at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall as a prize winner of the prestigious Artist International Audition. Other notable solo engagements include being a featured soloist in a presentation of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago at the Spoleto Festival USA, and as a soloist with the jazz pianist/composer Ethan Iverson in the concert with the New York based Dance Heginbotham at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.

As an orchestra musician, she had won various professional orchestra positions. She has been a tenured member of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Harrisburg Symphony, Tucson Symphony, and Britt Festival Orchestra. She has also served as Concertmaster with the Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Chautauqua Institution Festival Orchestra and the Mesa Symphony. Her orchestral engagements have taken her throughout North America and to Europe. Currently she is a tenured member of Arizona Opera Orchestra, the Associate Concertmaster of the West Valley Symphony and frequently performs with Phoenix Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Iijima has earned Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from New England Conservatory of Music and Master of Fine Arts in Violin Performance from State University of New York Purchase College Conservatory, where she received the Eugene and Emily Grant Scholarship. She went on to pursue Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where she was awarded a fellowship to study with Arnold Steinhardt, the first violinist of the legendary Guarneri Quartet.

Ms. Iijima has been a member of the American String Teachers Association, Suzuki Association of the Americas and Arizona Suzuki Association.