Friday, October 30, 2026, 7:00 PM
Simon Concert Hall, Omaha Conservatory of Music
Doors open at 6:30 PM. Free and open to the public.

Spend the night before Halloween with us. Scary Stories gathers the music that has been giving audiences goosebumps for two hundred years, from a desperate midnight ride through the forest to a witches’ gathering on a bare mountaintop.

Pianist Tammy Miller-Ladd joins us for Liszt’s Totentanz, a ferocious set of variations on the medieval “Day of Wrath” chant and one of the great showpieces for piano and orchestra.

Costumes are welcome, for kids and adults alike! The orchestra will be dressed up in their halloween best too.

Like every Orchestra Omaha concert, this one is free!

Program

• Schubert: Erlkonig
• Mussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain
• Liszt: Totentanz, featuring Tammy Miller-Ladd, piano
• Lloyd Webber: Selections from The Phantom of the Opera
• Grieg: In the Hall of the Mountain King
• “Remember Me,” from Coco

Also featuring our Art of Music program

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Soloist

Tammy Miller-Ladd, piano

Pianist Tammy Miller-Ladd enjoys a multi-faceted career as a soloist, collaborative artist, composer, and educator. She has given presentations, recitals, and masterclasses at colleges, universities, and prestigious concert venues
throughout the U.S. and abroad. 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 June
2018, she made her Kennedy Center debut (D.C.) in a duo recital with famed contraforte soloist, Lewis Lipnick and in 2022, she was invited to be the first ever guest artist for the “En Vivo” Concert Series at the University of Texas
at San Antonio.

As a concerto soloist, Tammy has appeared alongside the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra (MN), Springfield Symphony Orchestra (OH), Symphony of the Vines (CA), Westminster College Symphony (PA), Orchestra Omaha (NE), Oklahoma Composers
Orchestra (OK), Dordt University Symphonic Band (IA), and the Lakeland Civic Orchestra (OH). In 2024, she was the soloist for the 100-year anniversary performance of Gershwin’s iconic “Rhapsody in Blue” with the Nebraska Wind Symphony
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, OTMA President. She has commissioned and given the world premiere of piano concertos by Daniel Perttu
(2019 & 2023), Eric Ewazen (2023), and Stephanie Ann Boyd is writing her Conservation Concerto, “Orchidelirium” for Tammy to premiere in 2026.

As a composer, Tammy’s largest work to date is her 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. She has also completed a collection of works for intermediate pianists titled “Bedtime Stories: An Album for the Young” which was commissioned by Dr. Ivan Hurd with funds provided by the University of
Texas – San Antonio.

This December, she will travel to Prague, Czech Republic as the featured soloist for the world premiere recording of her “War Songs: There Will Come Soft Rains” under the baton of British conductor Mikel Toms, in collaboration with
the Czech Studio Orchestra.

As a passionate educator, Tammy has taught students in individual and group piano lessons at the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels. Her students have won numerous prizes at local and state competitions and several student have been
accepted to music programs with generous scholarship offers at prestigious colleges and universities across the midwest. In 2022, Tammy was a recognized as a “Yamaha 40 under 40” music educator, one of four piano teachers across the
nation that hold this distinction.

Tammy earned a performance degree with concentrations in piano and voice from Idaho State University (B.M.) and a piano performance and pedagogy degree from the University of Oklahoma (M.M.). Her primary teachers included Dr. Kori
Bond, Virginia Willard, Bev Beck, Dr. Jeongwon Ham, and pedagogy studies with famed pedagogue Dr. Jane Magrath. She currently serves as piano artist-faculty at the InterHarmony International Music Festival in Acqui Terme, Italy.