The 24-year-old makes his LA Phil debut on Saturday<\/p>\n
Cultural Attach\u00e9<\/a> Even the most cursory look at pianist\/composer Conrad Tao\u2019s schedule will make your head spin. He has recently completed or will be giving performances of piano concerti by Shostakovich, Mozart, Ravel, Liszt, ensemble work (with varied programs) and the world premiere of new work he\u2019s written. So when the LA Philharmonic was looking for someone to fill in for Lang Lang* to perform Beethoven\u2019s Piano Concerto #1, Tao quickly said yes. What\u2019s one more concert? He\u2019ll make is debut with the LA Phil at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Saturday.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve played the Beethoven 1st a lot and I love the piece,\u201d Tao says by phone, \u201cso that makes the decision really easy. It just feels good to dive into it. I\u2019ve had some seasons where I don\u2019t want do that again, but it\u2019s just so rewarding at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n Rewarding is just one way to describe Tao\u2019s career. Noteworthy might another. In 2017 and 2018, the New York Times listed his performances as amongst the best of each year. He has commissions from multiple orchestras around the world. He appeared in David Lang\u2019s The Loser at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel with Rod Gilfry in February. Not bad for someone who turns 25 in June.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I\u2019m just really greedy in some ways,\u201d he says readily. \u201cPeople never believe me, but I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m that motivated by anything. I feel like a hedonist at the end of the day. I am just chomping at the bit to do things and do projects. I\u2019ve been exceedingly lucky in my career that I\u2019ve been able to just do stuff that\u2019s interesting to me. I think it is a challenge, but it\u2019s how I\u2019ve always worked and I\u2019ve been working for twelve years at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n His math is correct. He starting performing professionally at the age of 12. He found pianist Jeremy Denk an important influence for him in the early years of his career.<\/p>\n \u201cJeremy was someone who, as a teenager, was super important to be exposed to. We talked about his intellect and thoughtfulness as a person. When we talk Denk we talk the totality of it. That he was a late bloomer was also inspiring. When I was growing up the person my teacher was always talking about as a model for a career was Emanuel Ax \u2013 someone who was working really hard and doing it for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n That Denk was gay, as is Tao, ended up being important, too.<\/p>\n \u201cHe and Stephen Hough. Hough writes about Catholicism in a really interesting way. I don\u2019t know how out Jeremy was when I first discovered him. But yeah, that was a huge thing, too. That mysterious recognition of something when you didn\u2019t even know what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n When talking with Tao, you quickly understand that mystery is vitally important to him, particularly when it comes to the music.<\/p>\n \u201cI have encountered attitudes within classical music lovers where people seem to be attracted to the music because they think of it as a hyper-explainable thing. But it\u2019s antithetical to why I do it. To me it\u2019s a pathway to this human connection that traverses history and engages with it and with the present because there is an unavoidable physical reality in the concert hall. That mysterious thing is what really drives me.\u201d<\/p>\n Read the full interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 24-year-old makes his LA Phil debut on Saturday Cultural Attach\u00e9 May 17, 2019 By Craig Byrd Even the most cursory look at pianist\/composer Conrad Tao\u2019s schedule will make your head spin. He has recently completed or will be giving performances of piano concerti by Shostakovich, Mozart, Ravel, Liszt, ensemble work (with varied programs) and … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3971,3659,3610,4195],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2734,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/2734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMay 17, 2019
\nBy Craig Byrd<\/p>\n