Our Musicians

Tara Villa Keith is delighted to serve as Artistic Director of the Orchestra of the Carolinas. She is in her twenty-third season as music director of the Davidson College Symphony Orchestra (DCSO) where she is also a professor and chair of the music department. In 2020, she completed an eleven-season tenure as music director of the Lee County Community Orchestra (LCCO) in Sanford, North Carolina. With the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Tara has served as a guest conductor, cover conductor and pre-concert speaker, and was the premiere instructor for their Symphony 101 adult education program.

Tara was recognized as a 2019 Honored Artist of The American Prize, a series of non-profit national competitions in the performing arts. Honored Artists are individuals who have proven themselves to be artists of sustained excellence over a number of seasons as laureates in the competitions.

Outside of Davidson, Tara has conducted orchestras throughout the south and northeast. She has particularly enjoyed serving as a clinician and guest conductor for middle and high school orchestras in North Carolina, including the Carolina Youth Orchestra Summer Festival. Abroad, and with the help from a Global Partners Project Grant and a League of American Orchestra Women Conductor's Grant, Tara has enjoyed conducting orchestras in Campos do Jordão (Brazil), Berlin (Germany), Vidin (Bulgaria), Sofia (Bulgaria), and Zlín (Czech Republic).

Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Tara grew up studying percussion and piano at the Preparatory of the Peabody Conservatory. Off the podium she is an amateur ballroom dancer, training in standard and smooth styles with JR Hipsky at Dynamic Ballroom in Cornelius. She also enjoys crocheting, making pesto, reading about animals and trees, playing with her many cats, making music with her horn-playing, birder husband, Eric, and keeping up with their powerhouse daughter, Naia.