September 12, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Maggie Estes, Director of Marketing
mestes@cliburn.org,
817.738.6536
FORT WORTH, TEXAS, SEPTEMBER 12, 2011-The Van
Cliburn Foundation has announced that pianist Conrad
Tao will perform in recital at Bass Performance
Hall on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at
7:30 p.m., replacing Louis Lortie to open the
35th season of Cliburn Concerts. Mr. Lortie is unable to
travel to the United States for his scheduled appearance due to a
severe bronchial infection.
Tao's program will include Bach's Overture in the
French Style, Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata, a selection
of Debussy and Rachmaninoff preludes, and Stravinsky's Trois
mouvements de Pétrouchka.
Single tickets are available from $15-$90 and can be purchased
at Cliburn.org, by calling 817.212.4280, or in person at the Bass
Hall Box Office (525 Commerce Street, Fort Worth, Texas).
Subscription packages are also available for purchase starting at
$76.
CONRAD TAO BIOGRAPHY
Hailed by renowned music critic Harris Goldsmith as "the most
exciting prodigy to ever come my way" (Musical America),
17-year-old Chinese-American pianist and EMI recording artist
Conrad Tao was found playing children's songs on
the piano at 18 months of age and has never looked back. Born in
Urbana, Illinois, he gave his first piano recital at age 4, and at
age 8, he made his concerto debut performing Mozart's Piano
Concerto in A Major, K. 414. Tao is currently a Gilmore Young
Artist, an honor awarded every two years to single out the most
promising of the new generation of U.S. pianists.
Tao has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the
Russian National Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the
Fort Worth, Dallas, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras, among
others. He has given solo recitals at the Louvre Museum in Paris,
the Ravinia Festival, the Verbier Festival, UC Berkeley's Cal
Performance Series, the Gilmore Series, and has toured Italy,
Mexico, Chile, Russia, China, and Singapore. His robust schedule
for 2011-12 includes an immediate reengagement in Utah, Detroit
Symphony debut, 11 concerto performances in Florida, 3 European
tours including recitals in Paris, Berlin, and Verbier, and
concerts with orchestras in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, and
Poland.
As an accomplished composer, Tao is an eight-time consecutive
winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer award since 2004.
His first piano concerto, The Four Elements for Piano and
Orchestra, was commissioned by the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of
Columbus, Ohio and premiered in October 2007. In the 2009-2010
season, Conrad was composer-in-residence with Chicago's Music in
the Loft concert series. His String Quartet No. 2, commissioned by
the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music for the Jasper Quartet, was
performed throughout the United States during the 2010-11 season.
As an award-winning violinist, Tao won the 2003 Walgreens National
Concerto Competition, which led to his performance of the
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor with the Midwest Young
Artists Concert Orchestra at age 8.
In June 2011, Tao received a medal from President Obama at the
White House after being named a 2011 Presidential Scholar for the
Arts in music. Also in June, PBS began broadcasting a Great
Performances Special nationwide, 'Dream with Me' with Jackie
Evancho, where Tao appears as guest soloist on both violin and
piano.
His first recording for EMI, featuring solo piano works
including three of his own compositions, will be released in the
fall of 2011.
Conrad studies piano with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky at The Juilliard
School and composition with Mr. Christopher Theofanidis of Yale
University. He also studied violin with Ms. Catherine Cho for five
years at Juilliard. In September he entered the joint Columbia
University/Juilliard college program. He currently resides in New
York City with his parents and sister.
About the Van Cliburn Foundation
The Van Cliburn Foundation disseminates classical music
worldwide, and launches and nurtures young artists' careers through
the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the
ensuing three-year international concert tours of its medalists,
award-winning documentaries, and a syndicated radio series
dedicated to the competition and its most memorable performances.
By making the competition available in its entirety on the
Internet, the Foundation has extended its outreach to listeners in
every corner of the globe.For audiences in the Dallas/Fort Worth
Metroplex, the Van Cliburn Foundation promotes great music and
world-class artists through the annual Cliburn Concerts series. It
reaches over 30,000 elementary school students annually with the
education programs of Musical Awakenings®. In
1999, it established the International Piano Competition for
Outstanding Amateurs™, which The Boston Globe proclaimed "a
celebration of music, and the people who have to make music, no
matter what." The sixth Amateur Competition was held May 23-29,
2011 at Ed Landreth Auditorium on the campus of TCU. Visit
Cliburn.org to learn more about the Cliburn as it approaches the
50th anniversary of the first Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition.
ExxonMobil is the Principal Corporate Sponsor
of the Van Cliburn Foundation. American Airlines;
"Crystelle Waggoner Charitable Trust," Bank of America,
Trustee; The Pangburn Foundation, JPMorgan Chase,
N.A., Trustee; Steinway & Sons; and
XTO Energy Inc. are Official Corporate Sponsors.
Official Sponsors are the Amon G. Carter
Foundation, Arts Council of Fort Worth &
Tarrant County, the Burnett Foundation,
JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the Sid W.
Richardson Foundation, and the T. Boone Pickens
Foundation. Star-Telegram is the
exclusive print media sponsor, and WRR 101.1 FM is
the official radio station of Cliburn Concerts.
