The Pianist: Conrad Tao

On a Saturday evening in May, after a long day of seminars and presentations at the AATS meeting, seven cardiac surgeons and I took our seats at Symphony Center for a program conducted by Karina Canellakis: Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3, with Conrad Tao as soloist, followed by Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Tao moved through the Bartók with a mix of personal flair and embodied intelligence that went beyond mere technical execution, while Canellakis wrangled Tchaikovsky’s sprawling symphony with an authoritative ease that verged on the inevitable. In between rehearsals for the final performance in his concert run, I sat down with Tao at a cafe to reflect on the program, on what it means to perform with the CSO, and on finding his ikigai at the piano. 

MZC | Before we get into the specifics of the program, I wanted to ask about the idea of the “hometown hero.” I was watching the Raptors a few nights ago, and the player who hit the game-winning shot was born and raised in Toronto. It made me think about what it means to perform at the highest level in the place that raised you. Last night at Symphony Center, people from around the world would consider performing with the CSO a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—but for you, this is also home. Is there something about performing here that only someone from Chicago can really understand?

CT ─ I think it was most dramatic when I first came back two years ago. It was incredibly emotional. I remember getting emotional on stage multiple times that week. Since then, I’ve come back a few times, and I’ll be back again in a month with the orchestra, so it’s begun to feel more like an ongoing working relationship—one of the many relationships that make up a musical life.

But at the same time, it’s deeply meaningful. In some ways I feel like I have a longer connection to this hall than some people who currently work for the orchestra, simply because of the nature of the industry. Staff members move around constantly, but many of the musicians have been here for generations. I grew up knowing some of them. Getting to work with John Bruce Yeh after knowing him as a child—not only as this incredible clarinetist, but as the father of Molly Yeh, who was in youth orchestra circles around the same time I was—that’s incredibly moving. Music is unusual that way. It’s very common to spend your entire life working alongside people you first met when you were seven years old. That continuity is rare.

The CSO was my hometown orchestra. I grew up in Naperville, but I was constantly coming downtown for concerts—two or three times a month as a kid. Honestly, I don’t even think I was technically old enough to be in the building. I think the official rule was eight years old, but apparently a six-year-old in a tuxedo wasn’t considered disruptive enough to remove. Now I’m dressed far less formally on stage than I was back then.

But there’s also a bittersweetness to returning. Some of the people who were instrumental in my growth here have passed away. There’s this feeling—maybe a selfish feeling—of wishing they could see this moment. Wishing they could see that it happened. Because ultimately that’s what it feels like: after spending your childhood watching performances from the audience, now you’re standing on the stage yourself.

MZC | Chicago is one of those cultural centres that people move toward—much like Cleveland or Boston in medicine. Did growing up in a powerhouse environment make it harder to develop as a musician because everyone else was also trying to access the same mentors and institutions?

CT ─ I think I was lucky that I entered that world so young that I didn’t fully register any of that competition. I moved to New York when I was nine, which in many ways is an even more aggressively pre-professional environment for the arts. Compared to that, my memories of Chicago are actually very warm and community-oriented.

Part of that is geographical too. Chicago’s musical ecosystem stretches across all these surrounding towns—Highland Park, the North Shore, Ravinia. It felt expansive. The scene was high-level, certainly, but also deeply supportive. I was mostly working with other kids at that age, and I remember it being remarkably kind. Karina [Canellakis] and I were actually talking about this recently—the parents here were often gentler than some of the hyper-competitive parents we encountered later in New York.

Looking back, I think growing up in a place like Chicago was ultimately an enormous gift. I had access to extraordinary mentors and performances from such a young age that I probably couldn’t even fully appreciate the opportunity at the time. I just absorbed everything around me.

MZC | I wanted to ask about the decision to perform Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto. For many casual concertgoers, it’s not the first concerto that comes to mind. What draws you to that work?

CT ─ The practical answer is that programming is always collaborative. Repertoire choices emerge through conversations between soloists, conductors, orchestras—and then somehow it materializes on your calendar. But I do think Bartók Three deserves to occupy a more central place in the repertoire. It has all the emotional richness and individuality of the most beloved concertos.

The surface of the piece is so beautiful—intricate, raw, joyful—but beneath that there’s this profound emotional complexity that isn’t always foregrounded in performance. It invites a different kind of listening. In some ways, it reminds me of Mozart in that regard: there’s an enormous amount happening beneath the apparent elegance of the surface.

And then there’s the context surrounding the work. Bartók wrote it while gravely ill. He wrote it for his wife, who was a pianist, partly with the hope that she could continue performing it after his death and have a source of income. There’s something incredibly poignant about knowing he likely understood this would be one of his final works. I don’t want to impose a strict narrative onto the concerto—it isn’t programmatic—but knowing those circumstances inevitably changes how you hear it. It gives the music this added depth and tenderness.

MZC | One idea I’ve been thinking about lately is ikigai—the notion of vocation or calling. In medicine, there’s been a shift toward encouraging people to think of medicine as “just a job,” and there are good reasons for that. But there are still professions—cardiac surgery, for instance—where many practitioners describe the work as something closer to a calling. I’m curious what sustains your practice on the days when inspiration isn’t there?

CT ─ Honestly, I think the practice itself sustains me. Not “practice” as an abstract career ambition, but the physical act of practicing. When I have enough time to really work, I find it deeply calming. It’s physically grounding. The practice room becomes less about achieving a specific goal and more about entering a space of exploration. I sometimes tell students to think of the practice room as a laboratory. It’s a safe place to experiment—not just with the music, but with yourself. You’re exploring your own responses, your own body, your own instincts through the work.

Music is extraordinary because it exists simultaneously as something abstract and something deeply embodied. It can be reduced to mathematical and physical principles, yet it also concerns the soul, memory, sensation, and emotion. As performers we experience that union directly in our bodies. And beyond all that, there’s simply the pleasure of sharpening something. Of slowly feeling an idea come into focus. That sensation can become almost addictive.

Sometimes I actually find the ambition and career aspects distracting. I care about them, of course, but ultimately they’re almost secondary. At the end of the day, they’re just the mechanism that allows me to keep doing the thing itself.

MZC | It’s interesting that you use “practice” in two senses simultaneously—preparation, but also an ongoing way of living.

CT ─ Exactly. I think loving the process is incredibly important. I really do believe performance is part of an ongoing practice rather than simply the end point of preparation.

MZC | Is there an aspect of performance that can’t actually be taught—something that only reveals itself under pressure?

CT ─ I think so. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never really experienced severe stage fright. There are moments of anxiety, certainly, but being on stage has generally felt liberating rather than frightening. In a strange way it feels very safe to me—like a structured environment in which I’m allowed to fully be myself.

That understanding of what it means to “be myself” has evolved over time. As a child it was mostly just excitement and joy. But I think I’m fundamentally a performer even outside music. I love dancing, for instance. I love spaces where people are performing for each other and for themselves. A visual artist I worked with last year was fascinated by this distinction. He said that when he finishes a work, it leaves him—the audience encounters it independently. But performance is different. Performance involves sharing yourself directly with other people in real time. And yes, it probably also involves wanting attention.

MZC | You’re also a composer. Does composing change the way you approach performance and interpretation?

CT ─ I think it does, though it’s difficult for me to separate because composition has always been part of my musical identity. I started studying composition when I was five and trying to write music even earlier than that. What I’ve never connected with is the idea of performance as pure execution. Music feels most alive to me when it’s embodied rather than merely reproduced.

When I listen to music, I’m not especially interested in hearing someone anxiously execute a genre or a style with perfect historical legibility. Analysis and categorization come afterward. In the moment, I want to feel someone actually living inside the music.

Composing develops a certain sensitivity to necessity—to asking why a particular note or gesture feels inevitable. Sometimes there’s no verbal explanation. You simply feel that something has to be that way. That intuition becomes very important. It isn’t random instinct anymore; it’s intuition refined through years of listening carefully to yourself and to the world around you.

MZC | Non-musicians often use music therapeutically, but, for performers, music is also work. What becomes your escape?

CT ─  I do have hobbies. One of them—a childhood obsession that never disappeared—is roller coasters. I love them. There’s something about that level of physical intensity that completely absorbs your attention. I think I’m drawn toward intense experiences in general. Dancing is another one. But honestly, music itself is still therapeutic for me. I’m obsessed with music. I listen constantly. Not always classical music, not always repertoire related to work, but music is always present.

The parts of the profession that become exhausting usually aren’t the music itself. It’s the constant social visibility, the perpetual travel, the feeling of always needing to be “on.” Those are the things I sometimes need a break from. But music remains something I genuinely love. I’m usually less happy when it’s absent from my life.

MZC | One surgeon I interviewed recently—who also trained extensively as a pianist—described surgery as beautiful because of “the surgical gesture.” It made me wonder: in performance, what matters more—precision or gesture?

CT ─ I’m a very gestural performer, though I don’t necessarily see gesture and precision as opposites. Music already exists in negotiation with physical laws—acoustics, rhythm, gravity, the mechanics of the body—but within those structures there’s always unpredictability and movement. Performance is alive precisely because it isn’t rigidly attached to a fixed plan.

That doesn’t mean preparation disappears. Of course you practice, study, build architecture. But the pressure of live performance creates a situation where you cannot undo what has already happened. You have to accept it, respond to it, and continue negotiating with reality in real time. That’s what makes performance different from the practice room. You’re making constant moment-to-moment decisions while simultaneously holding onto a larger architectural vision.

Maybe the architecture is the accumulated knowledge—theory, history, technique—while the actual performance is the living, breathing negotiation with possibility.

The Surgeons

The questions that animate this feature are not exactly new—they are the same ones that have always concerned surgery as a profession: What is a calling? What keeps a person going when passion alone isn't enough? What can be taught, and what can only be learned under pressure? They are also questions that belong equally to the concert hall and the operating room. In the excerpts below, six cardiac surgeons from five countries provide contrasting insights on these questions, with a view on how music intersects with their practice. 

Dr. Emile Bacha

Dr. Emile Bacha is Chair of Surgery at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Surgeon-in-Chief of NewYork-Presbyterian, where he has served as Director of Congenital and Pediatric Cardiac Surgery since 2010. He is the 106th President of the AATS and has performed over 8,000 congenital heart surgeries in a career that has taken him from Harvard Medical School to the University of Chicago to Columbia. A pioneer in hybrid surgical approaches to the most complex congenital heart conditions, he is widely regarded as one of the defining figures in his field.

Dr. Michael Chu

Dr. Michael Chu is Professor and Chair of Cardiac Surgery at Western University's London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, where his clinical focus spans minimally invasive mitral valve reconstruction, the Ross procedure, and complex aortic reconstruction. In August 2024, he and his team achieved a world first: replacing a patient's diseased aortic valve with their own pulmonary valve while simultaneously reconstructing a large portion of the aorta (known as a protected Ross operation combined with a hybrid arch frozen elephant trunk procedure). Two of the most technically demanding procedures in cardiac surgery, performed together in a single operation for the first time in history. He is among Canada's most decorated cardiac surgeons and a pioneer in robotic cardiac surgery, with more than 450 minimally invasive mitral repairs to his name.

Dr. Jessica Donington

Dr. Jessica Donington is Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Section of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Chicago, where she joined in 2018 as the first chief of a newly created thoracic surgery section. A past president of Women in Thoracic Surgery and the Western Thoracic Surgical Association, she is one of North America's leading voices in thoracic oncology, multimodality lung cancer care, and malignant mesothelioma. She trained in general surgery at Georgetown and cardiothoracic surgery at the Mayo Clinic before joining the faculty at Stanford. She then spent more than a decade at NYU Langone, where she built her reputation as both a clinician and an independent researcher.

Dr. Guido Ascione

Dr. Guido Ascione is a cardiac surgeon and Research Fellow at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York, where his work focuses on structural heart disease and transcatheter valve intervention. He completed his medical training in Italy before pursuing advanced fellowship training in adult cardiac surgery, developing a clinical practice centered on mitral and tricuspid valve repair. His career has taken him from the operating rooms of Milan's IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele (under Dr. Ottavio Alfieri, the world-renowned pioneer of the "Alfieri stitch”) to New York, where he continues to build an international research profile at one of the world's leading cardiovascular institutions.

Dr. Anastasiia Karadzha

Dr. Anastasiia Karadzha is a Ukrainian cardiac surgeon who trained at the Meshalkin National Medical Research Center in Novosibirsk, Russia, focusing on minimally invasive mitral valve surgery and atrial fibrillation ablation techniques. She left Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, subsequently joining the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, as a Research Fellow in Cardiovascular Surgery, where she worked alongside Dr. Hartzell Schaff on complex valve surgery and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy—research that spanned mitral valve repair and minimally invasive aortic root surgery. She is now training as a cardiac anesthetist.

Dr. Ryuta Seguchi

Dr. Ryuta Seguchi is Vice Director of Cardiovascular Surgery at the NewHeart Watanabe Institute in Tokyo, Japan's youngest certified robotic cardiac surgery specialist and a pioneer in minimally invasive and totally endoscopic mitral valve repair. He completed his Ph.D. at Kanazawa University's Graduate School of Medical Science before building a practice at the forefront of robotic cardiac surgery in Japan. He also completed a clinical fellowship in cardiac surgery at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, extending his training in minimally invasive and robotic techniques beyond Japan.

ON PRESSURE 

Is there a part of surgery that can only be learned under pressure?

Dr. Bacha — Yes. Learning to function under pressure is absolutely essential. Some people are naturally more comfortable in high-pressure situations than others. But it is also something that can be taught, learned, and modeled. To become a top-level musician, athlete, or surgeon, you must be able to perform under pressure. That capacity is foundational.

Dr. Ascione — Yes and no. Surgery is always a mixture of preparation and performance. You can study endlessly beforehand, but once you begin interacting with the patient’s tissues, the “algorithm” changes immediately. Every patient responds differently. There is no universal operation.

You can prepare theoretically for stressful scenarios, but when they actually happen, something else takes over. It becomes very similar to professional sports—those moments near the end of a basketball game where instinct and reaction matter as much as planning. And that’s where intuition becomes incredibly important. You cannot really teach intuition. You cannot completely teach how to perform under pressure in surgery. But interestingly, I do think music can teach aspects of it.

How so?

Dr. Ascione — In Italy, I trained in the conservatory system for ten years while also pursuing medicine. My final years of music training overlapped with my first years of medical school. Preparing for musical examinations and performances taught me how to disconnect from external distractions and focus entirely on the task itself. Music forced me to confront situations where mistakes became immediately visible.

Because of that, public speaking or oral examinations in medicine never frightened me very much. I always thought: I’ve already performed music publicly—this is easier. Music trained a kind of composure that later became very useful in surgery.

Could you speak a little more about your musical background?

Dr. Ascione — The conservatory system at the time lasted ten years and culminated in something equivalent to a master’s degree in music. Most people would continue into fellowships or advanced studies afterward. By the time I decided medicine would become my primary profession, I was already nearly finished with my music training, so I continued both simultaneously for a period. I would study medicine during the day and still practice piano one or two hours every evening.

Music has remained part of my daily life ever since, though now I rarely have enough time to practice properly. That can be frustrating because I’m very aware that my playing no longer matches the standard I once expected from myself. But I still return to certain pieces—Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8, some Nocturnes—pieces that remain physically in my hands even after all these years. Playing them became a way of reconnecting with myself ten years earlier.

ON MUSIC IN THE OPERATING ROOM

What role does music play in your operating room?

Dr. Chu — I do like music in the OR now, though interestingly, when I trained it was forbidden. We were taught to listen to the hum of the heart-lung machine, the monitor tones, the sounds of the room itself. Music can be wonderful, but it also has to respect the collective environment. It can’t interfere with communication or awareness. It has to support the room rather than dominate it.

Cardiac surgery is also different from many other surgical environments because the surgeon isn’t really functioning as a soloist. I think cardiac surgeons are much closer to conductors. There are so many moving pieces—perfusionists, anesthesiologists, nurses, and assistants—and everything has to move in harmony toward a shared objective. Your role is to coordinate, guide, and unify that effort.

Dr. Donington — I absolutely need music in the OR, though probably not for the reasons you’d expect. I don’t do well with silence. I actually find silence unnerving. Music fills that space for me. The funny thing is that I’m almost completely agnostic about what the music is—the nurses can choose. I just need something there. White noise doesn’t work either. Someone once tried putting on white noise in the OR, and I immediately thought, No, absolutely not.

Dr. Karadzha — I’ve never really been in a position where I could fully choose the music myself yet because I still work closely with senior mentors, and they often select it. One mentor used to play Ukrainian rock in the OR. He was actually Russian, but this was before the war, when listening to Ukrainian music there was still uncomplicated. I appreciated it because it gave me a sense of connection to home during long cases. If I were choosing entirely for myself, I would probably choose classical music. It’s less distracting and helps create the right mental atmosphere.

Dr. Ascione — I usually like music during the beginning of cases or during internal mammary harvesting, but not necessarily during the most critical portions of the operation because music can interfere with communication. If it were entirely my choice, I would probably play calm classical music—perhaps The Well-Tempered Clavier preludes—something that creates a kind of mental atmosphere without overstimulating me. I’m already excited enough internally. Sometimes jazz works beautifully too because it’s energetic while still somehow detached and fluid.

Dr. Seguchi — I usually play music that reminds me of university—music from the period when I had the most energy and passion in my life. I used to play rugby as a student, and energetic music from that period still motivates me and pushes me forward emotionally during operations.

Dr. Bacha — I’m probably going to disappoint you—I don’t listen to music in the OR. Many of my partners do, and they say it relaxes and soothes them. But for me, music is distracting because surgery has its own rhythm and tempo. If music introduces a different pace or emotional energy, I find it interferes with the flow of the operation. I prefer to keep the two separate. I like listening to music independently, and I like doing surgery independently.

ON WELLBEING  

How do you personally disconnect from the demands of surgery and leadership?

Dr. Bacha — For me, staying healthy and physically fit is important. That helps me mentally stay sharp and maintain wellness. I also try to disconnect. A good book, music, even occasionally smoking a cigar—though I know that’s not the ideal answer—helps me relax. A lot of it is simply spending quiet time alone, reading, reflecting, and letting go a little bit.

Dr. Chu — Earlier in life it was a lot of athletics and sports, but music has remained especially important because it feeds the soul. It accesses emotions that are otherwise difficult to reach. My wife and I have three boys, and all three are violinists at a fairly high level. Two of them have performed at Carnegie Hall. We spend enormous amounts of time practicing with them, encouraging them, supporting them.

Some days it’s exhausting, of course, but it’s also deeply nourishing. This morning, I spent hours listening to their recital performances, and it brought me immense happiness—not just hearing the music itself, but appreciating all the work and discipline that made those performances possible. Watching your children commit themselves to something beautiful at that level is incredibly moving.

Dr. Karadzha — Early in residency I made the mistake of giving up everything outside medicine. I worked constantly and very quickly began feeling burned out. Eventually I realized I needed to reclaim parts of myself outside the hospital in order to stay emotionally stable. Dance became very important for me. I enrolled in evening dance classes several nights a week even though they were far away and incredibly time-consuming. Strangely, despite returning home exhausted, I always felt more rested afterward.

I also began taking piano lessons again. I’m not a professional musician—I learned mostly on my own as an adult—but music became another essential outlet. For me there are really two types of artistic therapy: active participation and passive reception. Dancing or playing piano is different from attending concerts or museums. When I attend a concert or spend time with visual art, my mind completely detaches from the stress of the hospital. It becomes deeply restorative.

FOLLOW-UPS

Which kind of musician do you think would make the best surgeon?

Dr. Donington — Honestly, probably classical musicians. What struck me watching the concert last night was the level of perfectionism required to perform at that standard. One of my greatest surgical mentors used to say that after every operation you should be able to identify three things you could have done better. I found myself wondering whether the pianist was doing the same thing internally after the performance—whether there were tiny imperfections only he could hear. That relentless pursuit of refinement, even beyond what anyone else notices, feels very familiar to surgery.

Dr. Karadzha — Honestly, many of them. I think musicians and surgeons often share similar personality structures. Many surgeons could probably become musicians, and many musicians could become surgeons—assuming they could tolerate what they would see in the operating room.

The interesting distinction is probably between surgeons and anaesthesiologists. Surgeons and composers both often want visibility. They want to stand in the spotlight in some way. Anaesthesiologists are different. They’re comfortable doing incredibly important work that remains mostly invisible. In anaesthesia, excellence is often defined by invisibility. If everything goes perfectly, the patient simply moves through surgery and never thinks about you again. But when something goes wrong, suddenly your role becomes very visible. That’s very different from surgery, where almost everything is visible all the time.

What keeps you going on the days when passion alone isn’t enough?

Dr. Ascione — I think it’s a mixture of responsibility and performance. When you meet a patient in clinic and discuss treatment options—surgery, medical management, and transcatheter therapies—and eventually say, “Okay, I will perform this operation,” that becomes a kind of binding contract. The patient has placed their life into your hands, both metaphorically and literally. At that point it becomes your responsibility to deliver the best result possible.

In that sense, surgery is very similar to music. A concert exists on a deadline. You cannot simply say, “I’ll do this tomorrow.” The performance is tonight. You must be ready tonight. Cardiac surgery is similar. Every operation is a moment that has to be delivered at the highest possible level because for the patient this may be the only cardiac surgery experience of their entire life. For us it may be the tenth case of the week, but for them it is singular and unforgettable. That responsibility continues even when passion alone is insufficient.

Special thanks to the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and its 2026 Annual Meeting organizing team for the invitation and access that made this project possible; to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for their generosity in opening the backstage of Symphony Center and facilitating our conversation with Conrad Tao; to Venteux Brasserie & Café, whose table provided the setting for the café interview at the heart of this feature; to Unison Media for their support with organizing the interview with Conrad Tao; and to Night Shift Studio for their contribution to the photography for this piece. Above all, my deepest gratitude to the surgeons who gave their time, their candour, and their trust—and to Conrad, who stayed after the performance and made all of this possible.