By Andrew Hamlin
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
He started studying classical music not long after he learned to stand. He had his first piano recital at the age of 4, performed a Mozart concerto at age 8, and became a Juilliard student at age 9.
But Conrad Tao, who will turn 31 years old this summer, isn’t quite sure he was even the best violin student in his childhood Suzuki violin class.
“I remember my (violin) teacher very fondly,” recalled Tao, speaking from his home in New York City, “and especially looking back, I have positive associations because of the group aspect.”
His first musical memories involve improvising at a piano keyboard and trying to create his own melodies around the age of 2. Tao said that his first piano teacher was a family friend, and the only one willing to work with someone as young as he was.
“He had a studio recital, and I ended up playing so many pieces on this studio recital that I printed my own program, for my portion of the [overall] program,” Tao recalled. “That probably set the tone for the rest of my life.”
Tao grew up in Urbana, Illinois, south of Chicago. His parents were both Chinese immigrants.
“Like many first-generation ABCs (American-born Chinese), I grew up going to Chinese school,” Tao said. “I feel very fortunate that I grew up where there were always Chinese families around, so my parents certainly had a Chinese American community around them.”
“But it’s hard to identify the ways in which Chinese culture, specifically, impacted my life, aside from the obvious fact that it shaped my parents’ perspective, and informed the choices they made,” Tao continued. “I always grew up around fellow Chinese kids, both American-born and immigrants. [There were] fairly obvious things, like an appreciation for education and appreciation for my family, but beyond that, I don’t know.”
Tao began touring at age 12 (accompanied, of course, by one or both parents). Tao said that his favorite place that he has toured was a small lake town in Chile, called Frutillar.
“I was working at a concert hall in the middle of this enormous lake,” Tao recalled, “and across the way from the town, was an active volcano.”
He met dancer Caleb Teicher, a non-binary artist who uses “they/them” pronouns, in 2011 when the two were teens. They were both finalists in YoungArts Week, which brings together over a hundred high-school age folks from many disciplines.
Caleb Teicher & Conrad Tao perform “Counterpoint”, a collaboration between Tao and Teicher. Photograph © 2022 RICHARD TERMINE PHOTO
“Then we were both young artists living in New York and not going to college, just working and trying to find our way,” Tao said. “In 2019, we premiered an evening-length program we composed together. This program we’re bringing to Meany Hall is a project we started in 2020.”
Asked what appeals to him about Teicher’s dancing, Tao said that he finds “Caleb’s command of their body just such a wonderful combination of extremely loose and free, and precisely controlled.
“And so,” Tao said, “what this means is that I can completely trust them. Caleb’s a very good listener, and honestly a very good musician.”
“So I feel like we are primarily interacting across the musical dimension, but of course that involves the rest of the body as well,” Tao continued. “That involves the visual. I’m very proud of this concert because I think it asks everyone to contemplate the relationship between the body, and the sounds from the body.”
Asked about future work, Tao mentioned his adoption of the Lumatone, a 280-key rig with a luminescent keyboard.
He’ll continue, he concluded, to “express the harder-to-articulate feelings, and to poke at people’s assumptions.”
Conrad Tao and Caleb Teicher perform Feb. 14 at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, visit the Meany Center’s performance webpage.