Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer, and has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by The New York Times, a “thoughtful and mature composer” by NPR, and “ferociously talented” by Time Out New York.
In 2011, the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and the Department of Education named him a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts awarded him a YoungArts gold medal in music. Later that year, he was named a Gilmore Young Artist, an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation. In 2012, he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, and in 2018 was named a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist. Tao begins his 2018/19 season with the world premiere of his composition Everything Must Go, commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic. He also inaugurates Nightcap, a new series at the New York Philharmonic where performers curate a late-night concert, joined by dancer-choreographer Caleb Teicher and Charmaine Lee for an evening of multidisciplinary performances. In 2019, he and dancer-choreographer Caleb Teicher continue to develop More Forever, their evening-length multidisciplinary work which explores American vernacular dance traditions, as part of Guggenheim’s Works & Process series. In February 2019, he makes his LA Opera debut in the West Coast premiere of David Lang’s the loser, where he plays the onstage role of the apparition and memory of Glenn Gould.
Conrad Tao continues to perform concertos with orchestras around the world including returns to the Swedish Radio Symphony, the San Diego Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Antonio Pappano. He also performs duo chamber music concerts with violinist Stefan Jackiw, including a debut performance at 92Y, ensemble engagements with the JCT Trio in Seoul, South Korea; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Interlochen, Michigan, as well as solo recital programs. This season comes after his Lincoln Center recital debut, a residency with the Utah Symphony, and debut engagements with the Atlanta Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and Seattle Symphony, and return engagements with the Berner Symphoniker, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Verdi Milano, and the Malaysian Philharmonic. Last season, he performed in his own recital and composed a new work for Paul Huang and Orion Weiss at Washington Performing Arts Society, and opened the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra’s season with the world premiere of a newly commissioned work, Over. Additionally, he developed a multimedia work, Ceremony, with vocalist Charmaine Lee.
