Catching up with pianist and composer Conrad Tao

This weekend, weather permitting, you can hear the superb American pianist and composer Conrad Tao with the Oregon Symphony. Tao, who was born in Urbana, Illinois, but has been based in New York City since he was nine years old, will play Haydn’s “Concerto For Piano in D Major” and one of his own pieces, entitled “Over.”

I heard Tao when he appeared in a Portland Piano International recital in January of 2009 when he was fourteen years old. He delivered a superb concert that just blew everyone away. I wrote a review of that performance, which you can read here. Tao was so mind-boggling impressive, that I have never forgotten that performance, and I have always wondered when he might return to P-town. I missed a concert in which he played with a trio, but now, with the hometown band under David Danzmayr, Tao is back.

To get ready for his concert, I was able to talk with him via Zoom. Here is an edited version of our conversation.

Have you played the Haydn before?

I have only played the Haydn Piano Concerto once in public before – also with David Danzmayr in 2017 in Columbus, Ohio with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. The Haydn was the first piano concerto that I learned, so it is special for me.

I have had a relationship with that orchestra since 2007, if I remember correctly. I wrote some very early pieces with them. So the two pieces that we are doing in Portland are the two pieces that I played with David and his orchestra in 2017.

What do you find inspiring about the Haydn concerto?

The pleasure of playing Haydn is its effervescence. In some ways, it elevates me to perform it.

One of the things that I enjoy about this job is that I can place whatever I am going through into the performance.

Some music has such a strong sense of self and character, that it can lift you up no matter how you are feeling. The outer movements of the Haydn concerto feel that way to me.

Tell us about your piece, “Over.”

It has three short movements. At the time I wrote it, I was thinking about how the music would sound alongside the Haydn. The premise of the piece is super simple. I wanted to start the piece with an ending; so that is where the title “Over” emerged. The music became three little episodes on the word “over.” The piece begins with a bunch of endings – exclamation point chords – they start to accrete and then collapse. The second movement emerges from the wreckage and starts to reach upwards and above. The final movement is playful and manic, messy, and unkempt. Maybe like an organism constantly growing and losing limbs. Over as in overflowing or over the top.

It has a fun part for the percussion section, using a gym whistle and brake drum.

Are you a composer who wakes up and bolts three cups of espresso and starts writing?

I am a little more of a morning composer than a late-night composer. But realistically speaking, I’m a whenever I an composer. I am composing a lot of the road these days.

You are also appearing on January 16th in an Open Music event hosted by Issac Thompson, OSO’s new president and CEO. Tell us what you have in store for listeners.

It has a program of music that I thought would sound good together and articulates some themes of focus and time that run throughout all of the pieces. We’ll begin the program with the “Abyss of the Birds” from Messiaen’s “Quartet from the End of Time,” which has a bewitching clarinet solo. We’ll also have Ben Nobuto’s “Tell me again” for piano, video, and handbells. It takes as its theme the challenges of reaching focus. Ben has talked about how the usefulness that meditation but the realities of being in your mid-twenties right now – there’s so much that clamors for your attention – the information overload.

You’ll also hear Morton Feldman’s “The King of Denmark” and Linda Catlin Smith’s “Light and Water.” Both pieces reveal their pleasures to the listener after one can reach a state of focus under the immediate surface of sound.

My piece on the program is “Keyed In” for solo piano. It is a piece in which I was trying to write – following a melody that you will hear in the harmonics of the sound. As a pianist, I’ve been interested to find out if I can play up and down in the timbre of the piano in the harmonic series of the instrument – in the harmonic series of each note and each key – if I can access the inner sound world from the keyboard. I want to draw the listener in – to hear the sound inside the sound. It’s a heightened listening to what is already there. We all have to sit in the music for a while to really hear what is happening.

That sounds vey intriguing. Thanks for giving us a glimpse into your sonic world.

Thank you!