Congratulations to Tadao Tomokiyo, the 2023-24 Young Peoples Orchestra Concerto Competition winner! Tadao will perform Piano Concerto in A Minor: I. Allegro Moderato by Edvard Grieg at TRYPO’s 50th Anniversary concert on Sunday, May 5, 2024, at Carnegie Music Hall of Oakland. We also wish to congratulate all of our musicians who competed! Keep reading to learn more about Tadao and the competition experience:
Q: How long have you studied the piano?
I have been studying piano for thirteen years.
Q: Why did you choose the piano?
We had a piano in my house. I started messing around on it before I can even remember, and I’ve been playing ever since!
Q: Who is your piano teacher?
I study with Tom Roberts and Walter Morales.
Q: Where do you go to school?
I go to Winchester Thurston School.
Q: How long have you been a TRYPO member?
This is my second year with Young Peoples Orchestra, though in 2022 I joined a wind quintet as part of Youth Chamber Connection.
Q: What is the highlight of your time as a TRYPO member?
My favorite time was going to D.C. with Wind Symphony last year. It was so amazing to learn from Air Force musicians, play with the ISO Symphonic Band, and make so many great friends along the way!
Q: How did you prepare for the Concerto Competition?
I began reading through the Grieg in my spare practice time at Tanglewood this past summer, and I have been working on it ever since. Although I have been polishing a lot of my college audition repertoire lately, I keep finding myself wandering off into the Grieg concerto during my practice sessions – it’s just so good!
Q: What did you learn from the experience?
Working on the Grieg taught me a lot about how to get a big, resonant sound from the piano, which is an aspect of my technique that I have been working on for a while. It was also very cool to work with an accompanist, since that is something that we pianists rarely do.
Q: Do you have a favorite moment in Piano Concerto in A Minor: I. Allegro Moderato?
Ooh, it’s so hard to choose- the whole piece is so magnificent and beautiful but if I had to choose a favorite moment, it would have to be the epic buildup to the C major chord, starting from the singing legato section to the brisk waltz through big virtuosic chords and finally arriving at the tutti moment.
Q: What are your plans for the immediate future?
I don’t have any plans yet! I’ll finish off high school, go on tour with TRYPO, travel the Balkans with some friends, and maybe study music at a festival in Italy. I’ll be going off to college next year- maybe a conservatory, maybe as a music major, or maybe not. Whatever I choose to pursue, I have no doubt that I will continue to study music and play it for the rest of my life!
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Tadao Tomokiyo, seventeen years old, is a student at Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studies classical piano with Walter Morales, jazz piano with Tom Roberts, organ with Alan Lewis, and horn with Molly Zebell. Tadao has attended multiple summers at the Interlochen Arts Camp—where he received the Fine Arts Award—as well as the Internationale Musik-Ferienwoche in Marktoberdorf, Germany, the InterHarmony International Music Festival in Acqui Terme, Italy, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Having previously been a member of the Pittsburgh Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, he currently plays horn in the Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, where he was selected as the winner of the 2022–2023 Conducting Competition.
As a chamber musician, Tadao has played with a wind quintet as part of Youth Chamber Connection; he currently plays with the Frippery Four horn quartet as well as a self-formed piano trio. He has also played with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Student Side-by-Side program.
In addition, Tadao loves to play ragtime and New Orleans jazz, having attended the New Orleans Traditional Jazz Camp in 2022. He has been featured at the West Coast Ragtime Society’s Spotlighting Ragtime Youth concert as well as the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest’s Junior Showcase. He has also performed at the West Coast Ragtime Festival and the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival, where he was selected as the Ragtime Kid of 2022. Tadao made his debut at Carnegie Hall as part of the InterHarmony Concert Series in January, and he was recently named a Young Artists winner for the Pittsburgh Concert Society.