“For me, coming across something new that I can’t immediately understand and finding resonance with it is the most beautiful feeling in the world,” explains pianist and composer Conrad Tao, who the New York Times recently heralded as a great artist of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision”. In this Elbphilharmonie Innerview, the young American speaks about the meaning of music and gives philosophical insights into its evolutionary benefits and what it means to understand one another.
From Illinois to Hamburg
“I’ve always made music – longer than I can even remember,” reveals Conrad Tao, recalling lively violin classes in his home city in Illinois: “30 little kids all scratching away at their instruments”. He switched from the violin to the piano early on, studied to become a pianist and composer and soon began to swoop numerous prizes. Today, the level-headed and open-hearted musician is one of the younger generation’s most sought-after pianists.
He has already performed as a soloist with renowned American orchestras from Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland and Boston. Recently, he celebrated his Elbphilharmonie debut in summer 2024, where he captivated the Hamburg audience with George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”.
The future of classical music
Conrad is currently taking the international concert scene by storm with his own compositions too, and his first large-scale orchestral work was performed by the New York Philharmonic back in 2018. It is no wonder, then, that the renowned New York Magazine lauds the 1994-born musician as the “kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music”.
Celebrating music as a universal language
“Our ability to resonate is proof of a great common core of humanity and allows us to celebrate our differences,” explains Conrad Tao, referring not only to intercultural encounters, but also to non-verbal, emotional communication between musicians on stage. For Tao, communicating across linguistic, cultural and personal barriers is “the most life-affirming and thrilling feeling of all”.
“I find the different ways in which interpersonal communication manifests very interesting,” he explains. The fact that people are capable of communicating also fascinates him as an artist – in particular, the role of music as a universal language. “I think that, at some point, it must have been beneficial for us from an evolutionary perspective to listen to each other, to perceive, recognise and feel what someone is trying to communicate. For me, music is one of the most valuable ways of doing this”.