Conrad is the 2011 Soloist-Prize winner of Germany’s Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern!!! “34 young soloists and 10 ensembles applied to the 35 “Junge Elite”-concerts in 2011 to win one of the wanted junior-prizes from Festspiele MV. Two of these prizes were given to two talented young Americans. The soloist-prize was given to the American pianist Conrad Tao on a piano evening in Stolpe…The 5000 euro soloist-prize is awarded since 1995 and is donated by WEMAG AG since 2008.” You can read the full press release here.

“Tao [is] naturally gregarious, curious, and smart. He’s also a composer. On his debut recording, just out on EMI via iTunes, he plays his confidently poetic Three Songs, which hold their own with a pair of Debussy preludes and Stravinsky’s Three Movements From “Petrushka.” Already, he’s moving into more ambitious compositional forms. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra recently asked him to write an orchestral piece commemorating the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination.

 “Conrad is the kind of musician who is shaping the future of music,” says the pianist Christopher O’Riley, who plays arrangements of Radiohead in his recitals and who hosts the PBS television program about child musicians, From the Top. “These kids have a set of experimental listening habits, and they’re starting to pursue distinctive styles that they’re passionate about.” Tao’s tastes range widely—he’s enthusiastic about John Adams and Björk, he’s turned me on to the eclectic lo-fi band tUnE-yArDs, and I’m still making my way through the reviews he posts on Tiny Mix Tapes. (He likes Of Montreal’s Paralytic Stalks, especially its “gloriously unhinged finale.”) That curiosity should keep him from getting corralled into the all-Chopin zone.”

You can read the full article here.

Conrad’s first commercially available recording, released by EMI Classics, is now available for purchase on iTunes. His installation in The Juilliard Sessions consists of works by Debussy, Stravinsky, and himself.

View it in the iTunes store here.

Conrad’s performance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, hailed as “a blazing debut” by The Detroit News, has been posted in its entirety on the DSO’s YouTube channel. Watch it below:

Conrad Tao has been commissioned by the Dallas Symphony and Jaap van Zweden to write the official piece to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of JFK’s assassination.  Quite an honour for someone whose (Chinese) parents were not even born at the time, but the decision was unanimous after Conrad’s mesmerizing success there last May…

[via IMG Artists]

…Needless to say, Tao does not have an average college student’s life. Often, he said, juggling his schoolwork and performing career can be “incredibly frustrating,” especially since he does most of his schoolwork on the road. Having completed his high school studies entirely through independent study without tutors or teachers, Tao said that he is quite used to getting by on his own. But Tao maintains that getting a well-rounded education is incredibly important for him as a musician.

Conrad was profiled in the Columbia Spectator on January 19, 2012. You can read the full article here.

“I’ve found the work to be one of the most well-structured pieces ever written for the piano,” Tao said. “The first movement is almost 25 minutes long, yet the abundance of ideas never feels gratuitous — the structure of the work feels very intuitive. When I play it in a way I find satisfactory, the piece ends up feeling very short. It goes by in a blur, filled with gorgeous melodies.”

Conrad was featured in the Salt Lake Tribune on December 30, 2011. You can read the full article here.

Conrad Tao made Forbes’ “30 Under 30: The Youngest Stars In The Music Business” list, alongside the likes of Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, and Adele. He is the only classical musician on the list. The article writes that “this year’s roster was handpicked by a panel of expert judges—Randy Phillips, chief of concert promoter AEG Live; Livia Tortella, co-president of Warner Brothers Records; and David Banner, the Grammy-winning rapper and producer—in conjunction with yours truly. The central question: Who will be the most influential figures in the music business over the next two decades?”

To see the full list, click here.

American Public Media’s Performance Today aired Conrad Tao’s Piano Trio second movement “Eventide” on October 28, 2011, as part of their featured 21st Century composers series.  The Piano Trio was beautifully performed by the Juilliard Pre-College trio group, Dawn Wang, violin, Xinchi Wang, cello, and Conrad Tao, piano, and recorded on the From the Top show at Dekelboum Concert Hall, College Park, Maryland in June 2011. To listen to an online version of the show, please click here.

“Conrad Tao, who recently scooped the 2012 Gilmore Young Artist Award, is a pianist deserving of high accolades, as Benjamin Ivry soon discovers.” Click here to read Conrad’s interview with Benjamin Ivry in the September/October issue of International Piano magazine.