Olivia I-Hsuan Tsai – Piano
Dr. Olivia I-Hsuan Tsai is an associate professor at VanderCook College of Music and a Fulbright Scholar of 2024-2025. She is a frequent presenter at major conferences such as the College Music Society, Music Teachers National Association, National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy, and Illinois Music Teachers Association, featuring music of diverse cultural influences. Her book “Schubert’s Piano Trios” was published by Scholar’s Press in Germany in 2014. Dr. Tsai was appointed in 2017 as a guest professor at Lanzhou Northwestern University. She also performs at many colleges and universities, including Roosevelt University and Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, Coastal Carolina College in NC and Nebraska University in Kearney.
In addition, Dr. Tsai has appeared as a soloist with QingDao Concert Hall Orchestra, Southern Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and Highland Park Strings. She was the staff pianist of the world-renowned Aspen Music Festival and Musicorda Music Festival in the US, as well as artist faculty/performer of Oficina Music Festival, Curitiba Music Festival in Brazil and Algarve Music Festival in Portugal.
In 2018, she founded the Yang and Olivia Foundation whose mission is to promote music of diverse cultural influences. The foundation’s achievements were recognized by various grants and honors such as Endowment of the Arts and Western Arts Alliance.
Dr. Tsai came to the United States in 1993 not only as a pianist but also as a bassoonist. She received her Bachelor of Music degree with a high scholastic achievement award in 1996, and a Master of Music in both piano and bassoon at Indiana University in Bloomington as an Emma E. Claus Scholarship recipient in 1999. She went on to earn her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music (UC, CCM) as a recipient of a graduate scholarship, where she also served as faculty at CCM’s preparatory department. During her student years, she was the winner of the Buckeye Piano Competition, the Graves Piano Competition in the US, and the Young Artist Series in Taiwan.