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Born in Urbana, Illinois, 12-year-old Conrad Tao showed his interests 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 formal piano lessons at age 3 and 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 the first-ever episode of “From the Top” TV show “Live from Carnegie Hall” in September 2006 as violinist, pianist and composer. Conrad’s performance has also been featured on NPR’s “Performance Today”. Past concerto performances include those with the Aspen Festival Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin, the California Symphony, the Corpus Christie Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra, the Pennsylvania Sinfonia, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in Carnegie’s family concert in Carnegie Hall. He has also given solo recitals at Juilliard’s Paul Hall, the Rockfellor University in New York City, Chicago’s Music in the loft concert series, the Lincoln Theater in Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale's Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Upcoming concerts include concerto performances with the Miami International Piano Festival Orchestra, the Virtuosi Chicago Chamber Orchestra in Chicago, the Skaneateles Festival Chamber Orchestra and recitals in the “Young Musician’s Forum” in Schenectady, New York and in Broward Center for Performing Arts in Florida. Conrad is the winner of Juilliard Pre-College’s Gina Bachauer piano competition and the Prokofiev Concerto competition in 2006.
As an accomplished composer, his compositions have won national prizes since the age of 7 and have been featured on Chicago WFMT radio’s 50th anniversary program and the national radio program “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 winner of the 2004, 2005 and 2006 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer award and his “Sonata for two pianos” was featured at the 2004 award ceremony. He has given two composition recitals in New York City featuring 11 of his original compositions. In February 2007, his new composition, “Duet for Erhu and Violin”, a commissioned work by the Art Institute of Chicago, will have its world premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Midwest Meets East concert. Conrad is also an award-winning violinist. He won the 2003 Walgreens National Concerto Competition, which led to the performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor with the Midwest Young Artists Concert Orchestra at age 8. He is a recipient of the Stradivari Society violin for the past three years and is currently playing a 7/8 size Gagliano from 1750.
Conrad is currently enrolled in the Juilliard pre-college division studying piano with Ms. Yoheved Kaplinsky and violin with Ms. Catherine Cho. He studies composition privately with the composer 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 for four years. Conrad currently resides in New York City with his parents and sister, and is an eighth grader at the Professional Children’s School.
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CONRAD TAO
