Grace Victoria Heatherington-Tilka or, as we prefer to call her, “The The Amazing Grace” is the Fifth Element of Cuarteto Tanguero. She is an integral part of ensemble’s productions and draws from her skills as studio and live engineer, producer as well as a performer to forge the groups’ unique sound identity.

Grace has engineered and co-produced albums for the Latin American Music Center at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and for artists such as award-winning cellist Nicholas Mariscal and harpist Liza Wallace. She has also engineered for Oak Park Festival Theatre and worked audio and electrical stagehand for the Indiana University Auditorium.

A cello student of internationally renowned pedagogues Peter Stumpf, Peter Howard, and Sharon Robinson, she has recently been featured as a performer on tracks by Chicago-based artists The Boy Illinois and Yes Yes. She performed in productions at the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University, where she was the leading cellist for the Latin American Popular Music Ensemble.

Grace holds a BM and BS in Cello Performance and Recording Arts Technology at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University where her mentors included Dr. Douglas McKinnie and Dr. Daniel Stein. She currently lives in Chicago, where she also has a private cello studio and in addition to being a professor of Audio Engineering at SAE Institute.