Conrad Tao [Season 2016/17]

Conrad Tao’s 2016/17 season began with the world premiere of David Lang’s new opera the loser at Brooklyn Academy of Music in September, where he joined baritone Rod Gilfry on elevated platforms suspended in the air. From there, he oversaw the premiere of a new orchestral work, I got a wiggle that I just can’t shake, commissioned by the Pacific Symphony, as well as a new piano concerto commissioned by the Atlantic Classical Orchestra. He also performed with the Giuseppe Verdi Orchestra in Milan, the Nashville Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, the Staatskapelle Halle, the Tucson Symphony, and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Recitals and chamber performances have included appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, Cliburn Concerts, the Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and the Washington Performing Arts Society.

While serving as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s artist-in-residence, Tao premiered his orchestral composition, The world is very different now, commissioned in observance of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. More recently, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia commissioned a new work for piano, orchestra, and electronics, An Adjustment, which received its premiere in September 2015 with Tao at the piano.

Tao was born in Urbana, Illinois, in 1994 and studied piano with Emilio del Rosario in Chicago and Yoheved Kaplinsky in New York, and composition with Christopher Theofanidis.