Tao: An Adjustment
Composer Conrad Tao (1994 - )
Photo credit - Brantley Gutierrez
Regarding his piano concerto, An Adjustment, Conrad Tao offers this list to describe what the piece is about:
The way that depression sometimes makes every single minute detail, choice, and experience feel huge, almost melodramatic in scope; the way it simultaneously renders all those hyper-saturated details, choices, and experiences numbing; the harrowing, contradictory space between numbness and nigh-operatic feeling.
Remaining professional and disciplined while in a strange, adrift, suspended state of mind; the curious tension that results.
Dotted eighth notes; specifically, at least in “euphoria assault,” the way dotted eighth notes interact with a quarter-note pulse in so much electronic dance music and modern EDM-inflected pop; the weirdly beautiful way the resultant polyrhythms fall apart and come together.
The piece is in two parts, each with two sections:
The first part fumbles around, trying to find solid ground. “breakable gaps” keeps trying to build to cohesion but repeatedly fails; “awkward didact” struggles to maintain its rhythmic integrity.
The second part starts from a place of acknowledgment and expands the sound palette to include electronics. “earnest build” narrativizes, almost romantically, the accretive process of emerging from a depressive hole; “euphoria assault” is the complicated, uneasily bombastic result of that accretion.
Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer and has been dubbed “the kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music” by New York Magazine, and an artist of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by The New York Times. He is the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and was named a Gilmore Young Artist—an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation. As a composer, he was also the recipient of a 2019 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, for Outstanding Sound Design / Music Composition, for his work on More Forever, his collaboration with dancer and choreographer Caleb Teicher.
Conrad Tao has recently appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Boston Symphony. As a composer, his work has been performed by orchestras throughout the US; his first large scale orchestral work, Everything Must Go, was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 18-19 and premiered in Europe by the Antwerp Symphony in 21-22. In that same season, his violin concerto, written for Stefan Jackiw, was premiered by the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Spano, and the Baltimore Symphony under Kirill Karabits. Also in 21-22, Conrad made his London solo recital debut at the Wigmore Hall, and appeared in recitals throughout North America, including Boston, New York, Washington, and Seattle.
An Adjustment was commissioned by Dirk Brossé, Music Director, and Janelle McCoy, Executive Director, for The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Underwriting for this commission was, in part, by The Presser Foundation, The Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, and The Archie W. and Grace Berry Foundation.