Profile

Tiffany Unarce Barry is a vocalist, violinist, music educator, presenter, and published author in Northern California. A second-generation Filipino-American, Tiffany has sung and played violin in ensembles all her life. She earned her BA in Vocal Performance at San Jose State University in 2001, and received a Single-Subject Teaching Credential in 2005. In 2008, she became Orff-certified through the San Francisco International Orff Course and in 2017, she earned her MA in Music Education at SJSU with a focus on providing more Orff Schulwerk Teacher Education to music teachers in the South Bay Area. She is an adjunct professor in the School of Music & Dance at SJSU and a K-8 music teacher at Granite Bay Montessori in Roseville, CA.

Tiffany taught general music and a variety of instrumental and choral ensembles for 14 years at Cambrian School District in San Jose, CA, where she was voted “Teacher of the Year '' in both 2010 and 2017 for her expertise in arts integrations, STEAM education, and Project-Based Learning. She also received CMEA Bay Section’s Outstanding Classroom/General Music Educator Award for 2017-2018. Tiffany has held board positions for Resounding Achord Productions, Northern California’s American Orff Schulwerk Association Chapter, and CMEA Bay Section. She is currently on the American Orff Schulwerk Association’s Board Restructuring Ad-Hoc Committee, which aims to improve representation and inclusivity within the national organization, and she was recently elected as CMEA’s Board Secretary for the 2022-2024 term.

As a writer, Tiffany has published articles in AOSA’s The Orff Echo & Reverberations, Buck Institute for Education’s PBL Blog, and Teaching with Orff. In February 2021, she published her first music education resource book, Songs of the Sun: Filipino Folk Songs for the Musical Classroom. Tiffany has presented Orff sessions and workshops nationally and is also a Basic Orff Teacher Educator for Level 1.