FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONRAD TAO AND GEORGE LI NAMED 2012 GILMORE YOUNG ARTISTS

Kalamazoo, Michigan, June 23, 2011—Two young American pianists have been named recipients of the 2012 Gilmore Young Artist Award it was announced today by Daniel R. Gustin, Director of the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. and George Li were selected for the Award by an anonymous panel based on their artistry and their potential to establish professional careers as concert pianists. At seventeen and fifteen respectively, Tao and Li are among the youngest pianists to have received this prestigious recognition. The Gilmore Young Artist Awards are presented every two years by The Gilmore. Candidates for the Award are unaware that they are under consideration, and the anonymous selection committee evaluates them over a period of time. The Award aims to single out the most promising of the new generation of U.S. pianists, age 22 and younger. Each Gilmore Young Artist receives $15,000 to further their musical career and educational development, as well as a $10,000 commission for a new piano work to be composed for them. A number of appearances at the 2012 Irving S Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo are also part of the Award. Born in Urbana, Illinois, seventeen year old Conrad Tao began violin lessons at age three and formal piano lessons shortly thereafter. At the age of eight, he made his concerto debut with the Utah Festival Orchestra performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major, K. 414. In 2006, Tao won the Juilliard Pre-College’s Gina Bachauer Piano Competition and the Prokofiev Concerto Competition, and in 2008, he was named a Davidson Fellow Laureate by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, commending his efforts to make classical music relevant to the current generation. Tao stepped in for an ailing Yuja Wang (2006 Gilmore Young Artist) recently for a well-received performance with the Pacific Symphony in Los Angeles, and last month he was one of 20 high school seniors in the United States named as “Presidential Scholars in the Arts”—the only student selected from the field of Classical Music. As a composer, Tao is an eight- time consecutive winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award since 2004. Tao now lives in New York City where he recently graduated from high school and the Preparatory Division of the where he studies piano under Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky and composition with Mr. Christopher Theofanidis of . Tao will enter the joint Columbia University/Juilliard combined degree program in New York this September. Fifteen year old, Boston-area native George Li won first prize in the 2010 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York, and first prize in the inaugural Cooper International Piano Competition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music that same year. Next season in the Young Concert Artist series, Li will make his New York debut at Merkin Hall and his Washington debut at the Kennedy Center, in addition to other appearances. Since his first public performance in Boston at the age of ten, Li has gained significant attention as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with orchestra. He has appeared in a number of solo recitals and performed with the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall. Earlier this month Li performed at a White House State Dinner for German Chancellor Angela Merkel , and he is currently on tour in Europe as soloist with the NEC Youth Philharmonic. An avid chamber musician in addition to his solo work and appearances with orchestras, Li is a member of the New England Conservatory’s Vivace Trio, which has performed on NPR and for members of Congress at the Senate Office Building. Li attends Walnut Hill School and studies at the New England Conservatory Preparatory Division with Wha Kyung Byun. He lives with his parents in Lexington, Massachusetts. In addition to Dan Gustin, Director of The Gilmore, the Artistic Advisory Committee for the 2012 Gilmore Young Artist Award included Matias Tarnopolsky, former Artistic Administrator of the New York Philharmonic and currently the Director of Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley; Sherman Van Solkema, retired Professor of Music at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and Grand Valley State University; Ann Schein, concert pianist and teacher; Don Michael Randel, President of the Andrew Mellon Foundation; and Curtis Price, previously the President of the Royal Academy of Music, London, and now Warden, New College, Oxford University, U.K. The Gilmore also gives one of the world’s most prestigious honors for a pianist, the Gilmore Artist Award, every four years to an exceptional pianist who has the potential to sustain a career as a major international concert artist. The most recent recipient is Kirill Gerstein in 2010. The Gilmore Awards are the legacy of Irving S. Gilmore, a Kalamazoo businessman and philanthropist, whose special devotion to keyboard music and its musicians inspired the creation in 1989 of the biennial Irving S Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and The Gilmore Artist and Young Artist Awards. Award candidates are nominated by a wide-ranging group of music professionals from around the world. Previous recipients of the Gilmore Young Artist Award include: Jonathan Biss, Kirill Gerstein, Yuja Wang, Adam Golka, Orli Shaham, Orion Weiss and Christopher Taylor. Both Tao and Li will make their debut performances as Gilmore Young Artists at the 2012 Irving S Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, April 26 through May 12, 2012.

Contacts:

Daniel R Gustin, Director [email protected]

Mary McCormick, Director of Marketing & PR [email protected] 269/342-1166 or 800/347-4166

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