Raised with the Suzuki Method in Japan from age 3, Ms. Hisami Iijima has over 20 years of teaching experience privately as well as at the leading music schools in NY, 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. 

As a soloist, Ms. Iijima gave New York debut recital at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall as a prize winner of the prestigious Artist International Audition. She was also featured as a soloist in a presentation of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago at the Spoleto Festival USA.
 
As an orchestra musician, she had won various orchestra positions and has been a tenured member of the Louisiana Philharmonic, Tucson Symphony, and Harrisburg Symphony. She has also served as Concertmaster with the Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Chautauqua Institution Festival Orchestra and the Mesa Symphony. Currently she is the Associate Concertmaster of the West Valley Symphony, Arizona Opera Orchestra 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 a full scholarship from the Eugene and Emily Grant Family Foundation. She went on to pursue a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey where she was awarded a graduate 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. She had served on the board for the Arizona Suzuki Association.