Teachers and Staff | Tierney McLean

Born and raised in Spencerport, Tierney McLean has lived to serve through music since she began playing trumpet as a child. Awarded the Spencerport Music Association Scholarship upon her high school graduation in 2011, she moved to Ohio to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in Trumpet Performance at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music under the instruction of Alan Siebert and Philip Collins. There she was awarded numerous merit scholarships, as well as being named a winner of the International Trumpet Guild Conference Scholarship Competition in 2013. That summer she won an internship at the Wagon Wheel Theater in Warsaw, Indiana. She returned for a total of three consecutive summer seasons, and over one hundred performances of a dozen shows.

She was truly blessed throughout her college career with numerous opportunities, including winning the position of Third Trumpet of the Symphony of the Lakes in Warsaw, Indiana for the 2014-2015 season. She has taught private students in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and New York, and worked with several band programs through the years teaching concert band trumpet sectionals, jazz band brass sectionals, as well as leading a brass quintet. In 2015 she graduated Magna Cum Laude, and traveled as far as Colorado, before returning home to Rochester to pursue a master's degree at Eastman School of Music.

Tierney began her Master of Music Degree in Trumpet Performance and Literature in 2018 at Eastman. There she taught the undergraduate Trumpet Methods course, and was nominated for the 2019-2020 Teaching Assistant Prize for her work. Additionally, she pursued a Certificate in Arts Leadership from the Institute for Music Leadership, presented at Eastman's first Gender Equity Conference, and oriented her classwork to align with the goals of community teaching and arts administration. She graduated in 2020 after performing one of the last degree recitals of the year.

As a teacher, Tierney holds faculty positions at both the Eastman Community Music School and the Roberts Community Music School. For both schools, she teaches private lessons to students of all ages and abilities. She also currently directs two ensembles for the Rochester New Horizons Program: the Green Band, and the Antique Brass Ensemble in addition to mentoring trumpet sectionals for the Concert Band and Symphonic Band. She is currently pioneering New Horizons' first-ever music theory course to be delivered in an online format this fall.

Locally, she has performed with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Syracuse Symphoria, Finger Lakes Opera Company, Greater Rochester Women’s Philharmonic, South Seneca Music Festival Orchestra, Finger Lakes Symphony Orchestra, and the Center Stage Pops Orchestra. Outside of teaching and performing, she maintains an active role in the larger musical community as the personnel manager of the Center Stage Pops Orchestra, and is very grateful to have the opportunity to give back to the vibrant musical community of Rochester that has given her so much.