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Hailed by renowned music critic Harris Goldsmith as “the most exciting prodigy to ever come my way” (Musical America), 17-year-old Chinese-American pianist Conrad Tao was found playing children’s songs on the piano at 18 months of age. Born in Urbana, Illinois, he gave his first piano recital at age 4, and at age 8, made his concerto debut performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major, K. 414. Conrad is currently a Gilmore Young Artist, an honor awarded every two years to single out the most promising of the new generation of U.S. pianists. In December 2011, he was the only classical musician to make Forbes’ “30 Under 30″ list highlighting the “youngest stars in the music business.” His first album for EMI, featuring solo repertoire including three of his own compositions, was released as an iTunes exclusive as part of the “Juilliard Sessions” series in February 2012.
In September 2011, Conrad filled in for pianist Louis Lortie and gave a solo recital on one day’s notice in Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall presented by Cliburn Concerts that critics raved as being “technically brilliant” (Star-Telegram), “breathtaking” (Dallas Magazine),
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Hailed by renowned music critic Harris Goldsmith as “the most exciting prodigy to ever come my way” (Musical America), 17-year-old Chinese-American pianist Conrad Tao was found playing children’s songs on the piano at 18 months of age. Born in Urbana, Illinois, he gave his first piano recital at age 4, and at age 8, made his concerto debut performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major, K. 414. Conrad is currently a Gilmore Young Artist, an honor awarded every two years to single out the most promising of the new generation of U.S. pianists. In December 2011, he was the only classical musician to make Forbes’ “30 Under 30″ list highlighting the “youngest stars in the music business.” His first album for EMI, featuring solo repertoire including three of his own compositions, was released as an iTunes exclusive as part of the “Juilliard Sessions” series in February 2012.
In September 2011, Conrad filled in for pianist Louis Lortie and gave a solo recital on one day’s notice in Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall presented by Cliburn Concerts that critics raved as being “technically brilliant” (Star-Telegram), “breathtaking” (Dallas Magazine), and a “gripping performance by turns mysterious and defiant” (Dallas Morning News). His performance of Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in January 2012 was hailed as “a blazing debut…a performance no less seductive in its lyrical beauty than hair-raising in its technical brilliance” (The Detroit News).
Additional highlights of Conrad’s 2011-12 season include an immediate reengagement with the Utah Symphony, 11 concerto performances in Florida, a European recital tour including recitals in Paris, Berlin, Munich and Southampton and concerts with orchestras in Mexico, Brazil, and Poland.
Conrad has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra, the Baltimore, Dallas, and San Francisco Symphonies, among others. He has given solo recitals at the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Ravinia Festival, the Aspen Festival, the Verbier Festival, UC Berkeley’s Cal Performance Series, the Gilmore Series and has toured Italy, Mexico, Chile, Russia, China and Singapore.
As an accomplished composer, Conrad is an eight-time consecutive winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer award, since 2004. His first piano concerto, The Four Elements for Piano and Orchestra, was commissioned by the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, Ohio and premiered in October 2007. In the 2009-2010 season, Conrad was composer-in-residence with Chicago’s Music in the Loft concert series. His String Quartet No. 2, commissioned by the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music for the Jasper Quartet, was performed throughout the US during the 2010-11 season.
As an award-winning violinist, Conrad won the 2003 Walgreens National Concerto Competition, which led to his performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor with the Midwest Young Artists Concert Orchestra at age 8.
In June, the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and the Department of Education named Conrad a US Presidential Scholar in the Arts and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts YoungArts program awarded him a gold medal in music. Also in June, PBS began broadcasting a Great Performances Special nationwide, ‘Dream with Me’ with Jackie Evancho, where Conrad appears as guest soloist on both violin and piano.
Conrad currently attends the Columbia University-Juilliard School joint degree program and studies piano with Professors Yoheved Kaplinsky and Choong Mo Kang at Juilliard. He also studies composition with Professor Christopher Theofanidis of Yale University and studied violin with Ms. Catherine Cho for five years at Juilliard’s Pre-College Division.
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Reviews
"At 17, the musician Conrad Tao is already impressively accomplished.That Mr. Tao, who gave his first recital at 4, is hugely gifted was evident from the outset. He opened with a cleanly articulated, fluid and fleet rendition of Bach’s “Italian” Concerto. He played the slow second movement with poise and feeling. His impressive technique allows him to navigate difficult works with ease; the finale of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata unfolded in an exciting blaze of notes. He brought lovely colors and poetic nuances to three works by Liszt: “Au bord d’une Source,” “Vallée d’Obermann” and the “Rigoletto” Paraphrase.The program concluded with Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7. Mr. Tao spoke eloquently about the work and played it with fiery panache."
New York Times
"Whatever the age cut-off may be for child prodigies, 17-year-old pianist Conrad Tao has left that category somewhere back in his young past. To judge from his debut Saturday night with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Tao already owns a place among the world's musical virtuosos. Prodigious he is indeed. To put it plainly, Tao blew the doors off Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor with a performance that was no less seductive in its lyrical beauty than hair-raising in its technical brilliance."
Detroit News
"Conrad Tao is for real. The 17-year-old American pianist, whose star has only grown brighter in the 15 months since he bowled over the Abravanel Hall crowd as a last-minute substitute for Horacio Gutiérrez in Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody, showed that his return invitation was well-earned. His bravura performance of another crowd-pleasing warhorse, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, elicited a rowdy ovation from the near-sellout house on Friday."
Salt Lake City Tribune
"If NASA had a tenth of his talent, they’d be farming strawberries on Titan by now"
San Francisco Classical Voice
"the most prodigious individual performance since the first coming of Lang Lang in 1997"
Singapore Sun Times
"The most impressive element here...was his breathtaking command of rubato and his ability...to make these works of Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and even Stravinsky sing."
D Dallas Magazine
"It would be silly to advise keeping an eye out for Conrad Tao, or to suggest that this young man is going places. He's already there, and he's only going to get better."
San Francisco Chronicle
"The story of Conrad Tao’s life in music begins the way tales of early talent often do: At 18 months, he toddled to the piano and started picking out “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Last month—a whole childhood later—Tao strode onto the stage of Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and plunged into Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7, a desperate wartime work shot through with terrified epiphanies. No 17-year-old should be able to do justice to one of the most bleakly adult pieces in the literature, yet he played it with aggressive charm and flashes of genuine wisdom."
New York Magazine