The Conservation Concertos are a set of works for solo instrument and orchestra being written over the next decade, each about a different nearly-extinct flora or fauna, or environmental concern.
Each concerto is about a subject close to its soloist’s heart…
The Conservation Concertos include works…
with Anthony McGill for clarinet + orchestra
about the Nautilus
with Tammy Miller for piano + orchestra
about Nearly-Extinct Flowers
with Masumi Rostad for viola + orchestra
about Pernambuco/Brazilwood
with Tommy Mesa for cello + orchestra
about Plastics
with Tommy Mesa for cello + orchestra
about Plastics
the catalog
of
nearly extinct
flowers
The second of the Conservation Concertos, pieces which match the solo instrument with a nearly-extinct flora or fauna to augment awareness of our astounding symbiosis: with earth and our fellow inhabitants on the food chain all the way on down,
the CATALOG OF NEARLY-EXTINCT FLOWERS is a journey in five movements, each zooming in on flowers from different habitats across the US.
From the arid desert in the west across the plains, to the forests, through the marshes, and finally, to the sea: these flowers have been incredibly important members of their habitats and communities–this includes humans!–in ways you probably didn’t know…
The CATALOG OF NEARLY EXTINCT FLOWERS tells these flowers’ stories and flings audiences into their worlds in five movements that merge piano and orchestra to paint a swiftly-changing landscape into vivid, kaleidoscopic color.
THE PEOPLE
TAMMY
MILLER
STEPHANIE
ANN BOYD
Pianist Tammy Miller 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. She currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska where she is artist-faculty at the Omaha Conservatory of Music.
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 invited to be the first ever guest artist for the “En Vivo” Concert Series at the University of Texas at San Antonio. That same year, she was a proud recipient of the “Yamaha 40 under 40” award, one of four pianists around the country that hold this distinction. Most recently, Tammy was invited to record selections from Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s “Forest Scenes", Op. 66 for the Francis Clark Center’s “From the Artist Bench” video series.
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 June 2018, she made her Kennedy Center debut (D.C.) in a duo recital with famed contraforte soloist, Lewis Lipnick. She has previously given collaborative recitals with Mr. Lipnick in a tour across the Midwest and at the 2017 International Double Reed Society Conference at the Lawrence Conservatory.
As a concerto soloist, Tammy has commissioned and given the world premiere performances of piano concertos by Daniel Perttu (2019), Daniel Baldwin (2018 & 2020), and Eric Ewazen (2023). She has appeared alongside the 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). She has worked with conductors Dr. Peter Stafford Wilson, Dr. Jamie Wind Whitmarsh, Dr. Kenneth Meints, Dr. Melinda Crawford Perttu, and Dr. Matthew Saunders.
Michigan-born, Manhattan-based American composer Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990) writes melodic music about women’s memoirs and the natural world for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Her work has been performed in nearly all 50 states and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations in 37 countries. Boyd’s five ballets include works choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Lauren Lovette and Ashley Bouder and include a ballet commissioned for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Stephanie’s music has been praised as “a racing, brassy score” (New York Times), “attractive lyricism” (Gramophone), “[with] ethereal dissonances” (Boston Globe), “[music that] didn’t let itself be eclipsed” (Texas Classical Review), and “arrestingly poetic” (BMOP).
Recent commissions and premieres include a work inspired by Betty Friedan entitled Everywoman, with Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, and 2022 Indianapolis Competition winner Sirena Huang as soloists and commissioned by the Peoria Symphony Orchestra with George Stelluto; Julia Louisa Esther: a Suffragette Symphony commissioned by the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra with Christopher Dragon, the premiere of which was the subject of a documentary on Wyoming PBS in 2022; Alleluia Olora commissioned by Astral Artists for cellist Tommy Mesa; Aurora, commissioned by the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others.
THE PLAN
EARS: The Music
INSTRUMENTATION
Available in both:
2222/2321/timp + 4/s. pno/strings
and piano + string orchestra
INSTRUMENTATION
CONSORTIUM FEE
Organizations with budgets <$1M: $1,000
Organizations with budgets $1M-$10M: $3,000
Organizations with budgets >$10M: $5,000
Individuals wishing to be personal commissioners: inquire
Premiere rights, special considerations: inquire
Commissioners to be listed in the score by tier and the order in which they joined the consortium.
LENGTH + TIMELINE
Length: ~24 minutes
Movements: 5
Premiere Season: 2025/26
Score + Parts: available from August 1st, 2025
Length + Timeline
consortium fee
MINDS: THE STORY
I. Mountain Fantasia
The first movement, a luscious Fantasia, introduces us to flowers like the wild Ladies Slipper with her crown of delicate white petals above her slipper below of blush pink growing in the mountains along the Pacific coast.
II. Desert Elegy
The second movement moves us to the southwest: a desert landscape in slow motion, this Elegy is anointed by flowers like the Crested Coral Root with her magenta sunbeam of petals.
III. Prairie Dances
The third movement’s windy opening sweeps us up onto the plains: a swiftly-tilting dance movement, it introduces us to to flowers like the friendly and frilly white outstretched limbs of the Western Prairie Fringe Orchid before the music suddenly builds into a dark prairie storm that flows attacca into the fourth movement.
IV. Forest Rhythmics
Northern thunderstorms herald in a moto perpetuo movement of flowers growing among the mosses, fungi, and pine-needle padding of a dense forest floor. Here we are introduced to flowers like the Small Whorled Pogonia, whose tiny-dancer shape is startlingly human.
V. Marsh Lullaby
The fifth movement brings us into humid, ancient swamplands of the southeast: slow, dark, and eerie, we meet flowers like the Ghost Orchid in all her haunting elegance before building into a grand finale, exploding with color as our story ends at the Atlantic Ocean.
Ocean Epilogue
EYES: The VISUALS
COVER ART
Stephanie will be working with her long-term collaborator Sasha Parfenova, a visual artist who created the artwork above, to create a new collage artwork for this piece to be used as the score cover art, project graphic, and however commissioning orchestras would like for their own promotional purposes.
AT THE CONCERT
PHOTO WALL
Orchestras will be able to use this artwork to make a “Photo Booth” wall/photo backdrop for their lobbies to enhance social media presence via tagging, and to promote the project and message as a whole.
PROGRAM BOOKLET
This artwork will be made available to orchestras to use as a special one-time cover art for the programs for their performances of this work, again to enhance audience social media posting, tagging, and project message amplification as audience members take and post pictures of Sasha’s stunning The Catalog of Nearly Extinct Flowers design.
ONLINE
There will be an interactive lookbook on this website, accessible via a QR code in the program notes, that goes deeper into the grander story of the these flowers and the process of turning their stories into music.
See Stephanie’s Flower Catalog Lookbook.
HEARTS: The COMMUNITY–ING
the piano world + THE next generation of pianists
The melodies from the concerto will be made into a book of preludes like Stephanie’s Flower Catalog. Pianists will be able to be “mini-commissioners” of this work so that pianists of all ages and as abilities are able to enjoy and spend time with these pieces and the flowers they represent.
THE audience online
Through instagram reels + tiktoks, Stephanie and Tammy will be bringing the online audience along for the ride of the creation of this new piece, speaking about the secret program notes and process of composing the piece, the behind-the-scenes of working on the piece together, and Tammy’s advice on how crucial moments of the piece should be practiced (geared towards mini-commissioners as a follow-along component of this project).
These will be posted on Stephanie and Tammy’s social media accounts with commissioning orchestras tagged as collaborators. These will also be made available to orchestras for their own personal posting if desired.
cross-pollination
Thanks to the scientific component of this project, Tammy and Stephanie are excited to participate in pre-concert talks or panel discussions with a member of the local conservation community, whether this is a local marine biologist, conservation author, biology professor at a nearby university, or the like.
We hope that this will result in a fascinating conversation and context-creator for audience members, along with attracting new audience members (biology students/marine-minded community members/author fan base) into the concert hall.