![]() ![]() He found that noise music tapped into his appetite for extremity the dark subgenre of witch house became so ingrained in his bones that, he said, “it will never leave.” These websites, he said, were “an enormous help, super useful for someone living in a bunch of beige boxes and taking a lot of planes.” He was coming into his own as an artist during a time when lo-fi, D.I.Y. And the internet expanded his musical taste beyond classical music as a teenager, he was active on Tumblr and 4chan, and spent countless hours on YouTube. Tao was introduced to the work of living composers: Steve Reich, John Adams, the Bang on a Can crowd. Through a mixture of self-motivation and guidance from teachers, Mr. Tao spent most of his time with his parents when many children would want to do the opposite only now, he said, have they admitted how scared they were for him. (Luckily, that never happened.) During these first years, Mr. Tao was 13, dreading how an audience might react to learning that he was their soloist instead of Ms. One of his earliest jobs was as a standby for a North American tour by the cancellation-prone piano legend Martha Argerich. “It probably messed with me in ways that I’ve only begun to understand.” “I think I’ve been in denial a little bit about how unusual my life is,” said Mr. Tao said he views as a work “of rage and reflection and resignation.” These works also bring out new darkness in Copland’s sonata, which Mr. 11 attacks - and the bitterness of the Rzewski selections. Tao’s playing shines in extremity, through the muscular chords of the Wolfe piece - her raw response to the Sept. It opens and closes with pieces by Frederic Rzewski, the master of furiously political music, inspired by past examples of labor unrest in between are Copland’s Piano Sonata and Julia Wolfe’s “Compassion.” What he ended up with is a program whose concerns are more historical than ripped-from-the-headlines. Tao, who had gone into the studio to record three Mozart sonatas, also laid down the tracks that became “American Rage” he doesn’t know what will come of that planned Mozart album. “It’s not just a post-Trump thing,” he said, waving his hands as if to stop a moving train. But, he’s quick to point out, the selections began as a 2015 recital. Tao’s rigorous attention to his programs and their possible readings, to take his latest album, “American Rage,” as a political statement about the present. For me that’s also what gives me a strong sense of responsibility that I pursue a more personal path. “I am pursuing all this partially because I have a modicum of security. Tao, who has been playing professionally since an age when most children haven’t even begun to learn algebra. “I try to recognize how lucky I am,” said Mr. Tao’s schedule: oscillating between the establishment and avant-garde writing new pieces in between gigs and using what little time he has left over for collaborations with like-minded contemporaries. If the online world can seem at times overwhelming and scattered, so does Mr. He is also part of the first generation of artists to have been raised on the internet, which has informed his music and relationships, and offered a playground for his omnivorous taste and curiosity. ![]() Here’s another one: He’s a rising star - both as a concert pianist, with a new album and a Carnegie Hall debut this fall, and as a composer, attracting commissions from the likes of the New York Philharmonic. During a recent interview, this musician - a veteran at just 25 - referred to his ideas about concert programming as “constellatory.” When he thought he was rambling, he cut himself off and apologized for “galaxy-braining.” Conrad Tao tends to slip into celestial metaphors. ![]()
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