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Tammy Miller, piano
Award-winning pianist Tammy Miller enjoys a multi-faceted career as a soloist, collaborative artist, composer, and educator. In 2024, Tammy was selected as a National Finalist for the American Prize: Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music in the Professional Soloists and Composers Division. In 2022, she was a recipient of the Yamaha "40 under 40" music educator award, one of four pianists across the country that hold this distinction.
As a soloist, she has given performances at colleges, recital series, and universities, in-person and online, across the U.S. and abroad. She was invited to be the first ever guest artist for the En Vivo Concert Series at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Having an affinity for underrepresented repertoire, Tammy was invited to record selections from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's "Forest Scenes", Op. 66 for the Francis Clark Center's internationally recognized From the Artist Bench video series. Most recently, she was invited to perform Eric Fogg's "Faery Pieces" for the Frances Clark Centers video series Inspiring Artistry.
A consummate chamber musician, Tammy has appeared in recitals and commercial recordings with principal instrumentalists from the National Symphony Orchestra, San Fransisco Symphony, and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of México. In 2018, she made her Kennedy Center debut in a duo recital with famed contraforte soloist, Lewis Lipnick, following their successful collaboration at the 2017 International Double Reed Society Conference. She has previously held positions as a staff pianist for Nebraska Wesleyan University and served various universities and arts organizations as principal keyboardist for musical theater and opera productions.
Having an affinity for expanding the 21st century piano concerto repertoire, Tammy has commissioned and given the world premiere performances of piano concertos by Daniel Perttu (2019), Daniel Baldwin (2018, 2020), and Eric Ewazen (2023). Manhattan-based composer Stephanie Ann Boyd is writing her Conservation Concerto No. 2, "Nearly Extinct Flowers" for Tammy to premiere in 2026. In 2024, Tammy was the featured soloist with the Nebraska Wind Symphony for the 100 year anniversary of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue to great acclaim by concert reviewers: "I was hypnotized by Tammy's incredible skill and dexterity on this challenging work! She dazzled the audience with her amazing execution of virtually every technique required of the virtuoso pianist... lightning speed octaves and repeated notes, interlocking hand passages, and arpeggiated figures..." - Mark Dickmeyer, OMTA President.
Tammy has appeared alongside the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra (MN), Springfield Symphony Orchestra (OH), Symphony of the Vines (CA), Nebraska Wind Symphony (NE), Westminster College Symphony (PA), Orchestra Omaha (NE), and the Oklahoma Composers Orchestra (OK), to name a few. She has worked with conductors Beverly Everett, Peter Stafford Wilson, Jamie Wind Whitmarsh, Kenneth Meints, Melinda Crawford Perttu, and Joshua Kearney.
As a composer, she has an affinity for writing for voice and piano. Her largest work to date is her 20-minute-long song cycle, Learning to..., written for soprano and piano. The collection was the subject of a 166-page dissertation "A Performance Guide to Tammy Miller's Learning To... A Song Cycle on the Experience of Grief in Five Poems by Mary Oliver" (2021). Selections from her "Sea Songs" for mezzo-soprano and piano, based on the poetry of American Lyric poet, Sara Teasdale, were premiered in 2023 at the Mostly Modern Festival in Saratoga Springs, New York. In 2024, she completed a collection of pieces for aspiring pianists called "Bedtime Stories: An Album for the Young" which was commissioned by Dr. Ivan Hurd and the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Tammy has taught college and pre-college students for the past 20 years. Her students have been accepted, with generous scholarship offers, at major universities in the U.S. such as the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and University of South Dakota. Her students have placed in local and state competitions such as the Nebraska Music Teachers Association State Level Senior Piano Competition, Omaha Young Artist Competition, and the Nebraska Young Artist Award.
Tammy earned a performance degree with concentrations in piano and voice from Idaho State University (B.M.) and a graduate degree in piano performance and pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma (M.M.). Her primary teachers included Dr. Kori Bond, Virginia Willard, Dr. Paul Barnes, Dr. Jeongwon Ham, and pedagogy studies with famed pedagogue Dr. Jane Magrath. She currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska where she is artist-faculty at the Omaha Conservatory of Music.