CONRAD TAO, pianist

Born in Urbana, Illinois, 14-year-old American pianist Conrad Tao began showing an interest in music at a very early age, when he was found playing children’s songs on the piano at about 18 months of age. Conrad started violin lessons at age 3 and formal piano lessons at 3 1/2, gave his first public piano recital at age 4, and performed a recital at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference in Orlando, Florida at age 7. At age 8, he made his concerto debut with the Utah Chamber Music Festival Orchestra performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major, K414. At age 10, Conrad was featured on the national radio program “From the Top” as both pianist and composer, and he was featured again on PBS’s “From the Top - Live from Carnegie Hall” TV series in September 2006 as violinist, pianist and composer. Conrad’s recital performance has been featured on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today”. In 2008 Conrad was named a Davidson Fellow Laureate by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development.

As a pianist, Conrad has performed with many symphony orchestras throughout the United States, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Russian National Orchestra, among others. He has also given solo recitals at Juilliard’s Paul Hall, Rockefeller University in New York City, Chicago’s Music in the Loft concert series, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, the National Center for the Arts in Mexico City, Mexico, and a pre-concert recital at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. In his upcoming seasons, Conrad will be making debuts with the Symphony of the Americas as both violin and piano soloist, the Lexington Philharmonic, Santa Fe Pro Musica, and the Fort Worth Symphony under Miguel Harth-Bedoya, as well as return engagements with the Columbus ProMusica Chamber Orchestra and the California Symphony. He also makes recital debuts at the Harriman-Jewell Concert Series in Kansas City, UC Berkeley’s Cal Performance Series, Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and the Louvre in France, among others.

As an accomplished composer, Conrad has won national prizes since the age of 7 and his compositions have been featured on Chicago WFMT radio’s 50th anniversary program and national public radio’s “From the Top.” At age 10, his piano composition, Silhouettes and Shadows, won the BMI Carlos Surinach Prize as the youngest winner of BMI’s prestigious award for young composers in the Western Hemisphere. Conrad is a five-time consecutive winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer award since 2004 and his composition, Sonata for Two Pianos, was featured at the 2004 award ceremony. He has given two composition recitals in New York City featuring eleven of his original compositions. In February 2007, his Duet for Erhu and Violin, a commissioned work by the Art Institute of Chicago, and his string quartet, “two worlds”, had their world premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Midwest Meets East concert. His first piano concerto, The Four Elements for Piano and Orchestra, was commissioned by the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, OH and premiered in October 2007.

Conrad is currently enrolled in Juilliard’s Pre-College Division and studies piano with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky and violin with Ms. Catherine Cho. He studies composition privately with Mr. Christopher Theofanidis in New York City. A former student at the Music Institute of Chicago, Conrad studied piano with Mr. Emilio del Rosario, violin with Ms. Desiree Ruhstrat and composition with Mr. Matthew Hagle. Conrad currently resides in New York City with his parents and sister.