Piano protegé guesting with Tucson Symphony

“Actually, I’m a really terrible tourist,” said the 22-year-old piano protégé, whose résumé includes being the only classical musician named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” musicians list in 2011. He won a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant the following year.

“I tend to show up mostly to do my work. … But one of my favorite things to do when I’m anywhere is to spend time with players and musicians who have been there a long time and sort of show me around, give me a sense of what it’s like to actually live in a place. I like getting a feel for how people actually live in a place.”

This weekend, he will play a pair of Gershwin’s works, one — the seminal Gershwin classic “Rhapsody in Blue” — that he’s played before and the composer’s “I Got Rhythm” variations, which he’s never played before.

“I think my approach with both of these pieces is really to try to somehow capture some kind of ’20s sound, some kind of specific 1920s energy,” he said during a phone interview late last week.

“I think the ’20s were an interesting, strange cocktail of American pop culture and I think both of these pieces reflect that,” said Tao, an Illinois native whose résumé also includes playing violin and composing.

“My guide post always is the scene in the ‘King of Jazz’ where the camera basically descends into a piano and inside the piano there is another piano and a full orchestra and showgirls and feather boas and it’s just this kind of unimaginable over-the-top presentation. That tends to inform my approach with most Gershwin but specifically with ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. I’ll try to bring some of that extravagance mixed with a sort of from-the-ground-up street sensibility, as well, which informs a lot of the Gershwin.”

Getting comfortable with new people: “Music making is a social thing and ... that’s one thing I find really beautiful about making music is this collaborative experience and this meeting point that happens between people. ... I enjoy that first rehearsal and I enjoy that process of feeling out different interpretive quirks and personal choices.”

That’s why this is so exciting: “I like performing because it provides for that spontaneity. It’s one of those things I chase after.”