Biography
Pianist Patricia Tao, founding member of the Guild Trio from 1988-1998, has led an active career as both soloist and chamber musician. As pianist of the Trio, she performed throughout the United States and Europe, with appearances in major North American cities including New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. With the Trio, she won the prestigious USIA [United States Information Agency] Artistic Ambassador competition, resulting in a seven-country European tour. The following year her trio was awarded the position of Trio-in-Residence at the Tanglewood Music Center, where they were lauded by the Boston Globe as a “beautiful new landmark” on the concert stage.
As soloist, Dr. Tao toured the United States for Columbia Artist’s Community Concerts series, and in 1990 was reinvited as an “Artistic Ambassador” for the USIA, with recitals in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria.
Winner of numerous awards, she was the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Scholarship and the David McCord Arts Award upon graduation from Harvard University.
Summer festival credits include the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, England, Rutgers Summerfest, the Cape May Music Festival, Apple Hill Music Festival, the Summer Serenades at the Staller Center, Niederstotzingen Festival in Germany and the International Arts Festival in France. Recent solo performances have included recitals in Alberta, Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 414 with string quartet at the Winspear Centre, and concerto performances with a traditional Chinese instrument orchestra.
Dr. Tao’s live performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, WNYC’s Around New York, WQXR’s The Listening Room, the public television series Premiere Performances out of St. Louis, Chicago’s WFMT and Our Music on CBC. Dedicated to the performance of new works, Dr. Tao (with the Guild Trio) commissioned and premiered numerous works, including William Bolcom’s Spring Trio, Sheila Silver’s To the Spirit Unconquered, Harvey Sollberger’s From Winter’s Frozen Stillness, and works by Bradley Lubman, Daniel Weymouth, Peter Winkler and Perry Goldstein.
Previous recordings include Sheila Silver’s To the Spirit Unconquered on the CRI label, a solo CD on the Arktos label featuring works of Schubert, Liszt and Corigliano, and her newly-released recording of cello and piano sonatas with Hoover/Tao Duo partner cellist Marina Hoover on the Centaur label.
An avid chamber musician, Dr. Tao regularly performs frequently with Ms. Hoover, with most recent performances in New York and Chicago. Other collaborations have included performances with violist Marcus Thompson, violinist Scott St. John, and French clarinetist Michel Lethiec. In 2002 Dr. Tao launched Hear’s to Your Health Concerts held at the Walter Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre at the University of Alberta. These intimate chamber concerts feature musicians from the Edmonton musical community as well as international artists.
Dr. Tao received her undergraduate education at Harvard University, a Master's degree with distinction from Indiana University and her doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where her principal teachers were Leonard Shure, Gyorgy Sebok and Gilbert Kalish and in chamber music, Bernard Greenhouse, Leon Fleisher, Julius Levine and Timothy Eddy.
She has given master classes at numerous schools including the University of Ottawa, Ithaca College, and the Conservatories of Barcelona, Prague and Bratislava. She has held performance residencies at the Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York, the medical school of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the University of Virginia.
She taught at Western Washington University, and in 2002 was appointed Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Alberta.
