Conrad Tao is an American pianist, composer, and former violinist who has been dazzling audiences around the world since a very early age. In 2011, when the artist was just 17 years old, Forbes magazine named him as one of the “30 Under 30” in the music industry. He was the only classical musician on that list. He’s just released his second major-label recording for Warner Classics which includes a program centered around Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

Tao talked about his new release with KMFA’s music director, Chris Johnson. A few excerpts from their conversation are below, to hear their full discussion, click the orange audio play button above.

On how the internet and “playlist culture” impacts selecting music for an album:

In this case, this is an album that started with a center. Pictures at an Exihibtion is the center of the album. It was the first thing that I recorded, so everything else kind of grew from that. It was about shaping a playlist of different pieces that interacted with that center in many different ways. Pictures is a work about memory and which uses images as a spring board to explore memory, and so that defined the rest of the album.

On the development of this particular recording:

Because of the way that the recording process for this album shook out, I wasn’t expecting this recording of Pictures to turn into a full length studio album. It’s mostly a live performance and I thought that maybe it could just be an EP or a single digital release. And then one thing lead to another and it became this. I wasn’t planning that the disc would be mostly contemporary music. It’s just then when I kept expanding it [the notion of pictures and memories] that this is what came out of that.

On working in a studio and recording:

I like recording spontaneously. I don’t know if I like live recordings or studio recordings more, but I like the process to feel organic and reactive and responsive. I prefer feeling like I’m responding to things as opposed to going in with a frame in mind and having to work within those confines.

On listening to his own recordings after they’ve been made:

I think I’ve had enough experience listening to myself and my compositions that I know how those rhythms work. This album is just a few months old and it’s still relatively fresh. I still remember those sessions really well. I’m in a golden period where I still like the thing. You need space. You’re either really close to the thing, especially something that you are really proud of immediately. Then I always end having a period a year later where I can’t listen to the thing at all. It’s not until I have some healthy distance – say three years later – where I can go back and appreciate something as a document, or a representation of what I was doing creatively at the time. But there’s always that middle period where it’s like, “this doesn’t feel like me at all anymore!”

On the piece A Walk (For Emilio):

Emilio is Emilio del Rosario who was my first serious piano teacher. I studied with him from the ages of 5-9. He died in 2010 and he was ill for a couple years before that. And when I visited him during those last couple of years, he didn’t remember who I was, but he remembered a lot music. I played for him one year. I was playing Chopin’s Andante Spinato and Grand Polonaise and there were other people in the room. After I finished the Andante Spinato, people started applauding and he stopped them and said “No, wait! There’s more.” He was very indignant about it and I loved it. He didn’t remember who I was, but he remembered the music. A lot of stuff has happened in my life since he fell ill and on some level there’s this very selfish desire to just wonder what he would say. This desire to hear his feedback about a project that I’m working on. To have his voice as part of the conversation. I find myself thinking about that a lot, so I wanted to write a piece of music that was about that complex feeling of wishing you could have a moment with someone who is dead. Because that moment will never happen and you know that. It’s not like someone you don’t talk to and could suddenly call them up if you wanted to do that. And, generally, in my day-to-day life, I consider that a foolhardy thing to do, but music feels like an interesting and effective way to engage with that experience. The anger. The sadness. It’s a very uncomfortable cocktail of emotions and that is what this piece is about. It’s kind of an imagined memory.