From The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n

Whipping between the establishment and the avant-garde, this pianist and composer is a rising star at 25.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Joshua Barone<\/p>\n

Conrad Tao tends to slip into celestial metaphors. During a recent interview, this musician \u2014 a veteran at just 25 \u2014 referred to his ideas about concert programming as \u201cconstellatory.\u201d When he thought he was rambling, he cut himself off and apologized for \u201cgalaxy-braining.\u201d
\nHere\u2019s another one: He\u2019s a rising star \u2014 both as a concert pianist, with a new album and a Carnegie Hall debut this fall, and as a composer, attracting commissions from the likes of the New York Philharmonic. He is also part of the first generation of artists to have been raised on the internet, which has informed his music and relationships, and offered a playground for his omnivorous taste and curiosity.<\/p>\n

If the online world can seem at times overwhelming and scattered, so does Mr. Tao\u2019s schedule: oscillating between the establishment and avant-garde; writing new pieces in between gigs; and using what little time he has left over for collaborations with like-minded contemporaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to recognize how lucky I am,\u201d said Mr. Tao, who has been playing professionally since an age when most children haven\u2019t even begun to learn algebra. \u201cI am pursuing all this partially because I have a modicum of security. For me that\u2019s also what gives me a strong sense of responsibility that I pursue a more personal path. And I want to share it.\u201d
\nHe will share some of it on Nov. 20, when he makes his debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, in a program that includes contemporary music alongside classics by Bach, Rachmaninoff and Schumann.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love putting together a program,\u201d he said. \u201cI get to think like a composer while also performing like a pianist. In this, I\u2019m playing with applause breaks more intentionally and experimenting with juxtapositions. Like when I put Bach and Elliott Carter together, I\u2019m not suturing the gap between them, but maybe one can hear both a little differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Tao talks a lot; his friend Charmaine Lee, a vocalist and improviser, described him as being \u201cin perpetual interview mode.\u201d He seems to always be scrutinizing, not only the world around him, but also his own ideas as they\u2019re formed. Days after discussing the Carnegie program, he sent a long text message adding to his thoughts about the recital format and the audience\u2019s role in it, how their listening \u2014 \u201cto the totality of the concert space, the hiss of the ventilation system, the breath or lack thereof of an audience, phones and crinkles and the like\u201d \u2014 can be \u201cthe site of music-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy, given Mr. Tao\u2019s rigorous attention to his programs and their possible readings, to take his latest album, \u201cAmerican Rage,\u201d as a political statement about the present. But, he\u2019s quick to point out, the selections began as a 2015 recital. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a post-Trump thing,\u201d he said, waving his hands as if to stop a moving train.<\/p>\n

Mr. Tao, who had gone into the studio to record three Mozart sonatas, also laid down the tracks that became \u201cAmerican Rage\u201d; he doesn\u2019t know what will come of that planned Mozart album. What he ended up with is a program whose concerns are more historical than ripped-from-the-headlines. It opens and closes with pieces by Frederic Rzewski, the master of furiously political music, inspired by past examples of labor unrest; in between are Copland\u2019s Piano Sonata and Julia Wolfe\u2019s \u201cCompassion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Tao\u2019s playing shines in extremity, through the muscular chords of the Wolfe piece \u2014 her raw response to the Sept. 11 attacks \u2014 and the bitterness of the Rzewski selections. These works also bring out new darkness in Copland\u2019s sonata, which Mr. Tao said he views as a work \u201cof rage and reflection and resignation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich Side Are You On?\u201d \u2014 a Rzewski piece based on a 1931 protest song \u2014 features an extended improvisation, which has become integral to Mr. Tao\u2019s performance practice over the past few years. It\u2019s a far cry from the standard repertory with which he began his career.<\/p>\n

Mr. Tao grew up in the Midwest and the Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, with a climate scientist for a mother and a telecommunications engineer for a father. Having begun to play professionally by the age of 11, he got a manager when he was 12, and toured with showpieces like Rachmaninoff\u2019s \u201cRhapsody on a Theme of Paganini\u201d and Prokofiev\u2019s Third Piano Concerto.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019ve been in denial a little bit about how unusual my life is,\u201d said Mr. Tao, who was also a violin prodigy. \u201cIt probably messed with me in ways that I\u2019ve only begun to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full profile.<\/a><\/p>\n

This profile was written ahead of Conrad Tao’s Carnegie Hall recital debut. The New York Times<\/em> praised the recital for both Tao’s virtuosity and exhilarating performance style. \u201cMr. Tao\u2019s playing was steely and exhilarating\u2026Rachmaninoff, represented here by his mercurial \u00c9tude-Tableau in A minor, held his own quite well with all these living composers, thanks to Mr. Tao\u2019s subtle performance. Mr. Lang\u2019s bittersweet \u201cwed\u201d provided a glistening, delicate contrast. Then Mr. Tao tore into Jason Eckardt\u2019s \u201cEchoes\u2019 White Veil,\u201d a ferocious 11-minute work, all frenzied eruptions of hellbent runs and leaping chords. It was an inspired idea to go without break into Schumann\u2019s \u201cKreisleriana.\u201d Mr. Tao carried this 19th-century classic, a fantastical 30-minute suite, into the 21st century, bringing out inner voices, pungent harmonies and obsessive rhythmic elements that many pianists gloss over.For an encore, Mr. Tao played an arrangement of the singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston\u2019s \u201cTrue Love Will Find You in the End,\u201d dedicated to its composer, who died in September. While playing, Mr. Tao sang the lyrics in a soft, earthy voice. Not many virtuosos would attempt something so revealing.\u201d Read the full review.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The New York Times Whipping between the establishment and the avant-garde, this pianist and composer is a rising star at 25. By Joshua Barone Conrad Tao tends to slip into celestial metaphors. During a recent interview, this musician \u2014 a veteran at just 25 \u2014 referred to his ideas about concert programming as \u201cconstellatory.\u201d … 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":[4256,3971,3610,4195],"class_list":["post-5676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-composer","tag-conrad-tao","tag-piano","tag-profile"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"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=5676"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5723,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676\/revisions\/5723"}],"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=5676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}