Friqtao and the art of going with the flow

The 24 year old has never resisted the natural ebb and flow of his life experiences; rather, they have carried him from performing covers in train stations in the French capital to moving to the UK, composing his own songs, and playing on actual stages. Each of Friqtao’s transitions has trickled graciously to the next, in a process which he defines as his Lifestream. 

When I sit down to talk to Friqtao — who keeps his full name under wraps, only being referred to as ‘Q’ — he’s fresh off a UK/EU tour run and the release of his second EP, Lifestream 2. It’s his biggest tour to date, with shows in six cities and an achievement that Q reflects on with a comfortable collectedness, a disposition that comes from an artist who has learned to go with the current and trust where the process takes him. But, as Q tells me, he took time to settle into this. Not for a lack of passion or skill, but plain childhood stubbornness.  

“My first introduction to music was my father,” Q tells me when I ask about his earliest memories of engaging with music. "My dad used to play the piano when my older brother and I were growing up. When I was five, I started playing the piano because my brother and I wanted to be like our dad. But my brother was always much better than me when I first started playing, so that really annoyed me."

Consequently, his early piano playing came to a screeching halt at age six. The desire to return to the instrument wouldn’t return until several years later, when the forced isolation of the global pandemic sent him searching for something to do with his time. 

“I had nothing else to do, so I started playing the piano again,” he admits. “Since it's the first instrument I started playing and I would hear it all the time at home, whether it's my brother or my dad, when I got back into it around Covid, it just felt really natural. Like, my hands never really forgot it. I sat down, and I felt comfortable. It didn't really take me long.”

At the time, Q wasn’t particularly concerned with writing his own compositions, but he found himself drawn towards reinterpreting contemporary music. It was 2023, he was studying in Bristol, and he developed a knack for performing more unexpected arrangements on piano. It wasn’t something that he would decide to keep to himself, however, but he tracked the journey of reconnecting with his passion on social media. 

“So many things started to happen in the online space with all of the videos I was posting,” Q says. “I would just post so many videos of me playing different songs on the piano, covers that you wouldn’t really expect to hear on the piano. Loads of Kanye West, Mac Miller, Jay-Z, Playboi Carti.”

It was only a year ago that Q began to lose steam with making covers. He’d developed a substantial audience, now amassing roughly 3.7 million TikTok followers, and he found himself looking for something new to the table. His stage name, Friqtao, is a combination of “fri” from the Danish word for “freedom”, inspired by his mother’s Danish heritage, and “tao”, standing for creativity in Vietnamese, representing his father’s Vietnamese heritage. Q had made great strides in fulfilling the creative element, but it was time for him to lean into the freedom side. 

“It gained so much traction that I didn't really expect,” Q says, reflecting on his time covering songs. "I can only do covers for so long until I get tired of it. I'm like, well, I can actually offer so much more to this music world than just covering other people's art. And it's so crazy now because I'm seeing so many videos of people tagging me in videos of them covering my music.”

This was affirming for someone who had simply taken a plunge into sharing his own compositions, admitting that he’s not a formally trained pianist and is largely self-taught. Q references Hayato Sumino, the Japanese pianist who competed in the Chopin Competition without formal training, as someone he sees a lot of himself in — a talent who represents musical success without the need for a technical background. "I see a lot of resemblances between his playing and mine, because I never really had a piano teacher. I sort of learned it by myself,” Q explains. “I feel like the way that I approach the piano is very unique because I'm not following any guidelines or whatever. I just play what feels right to me. I saw a lot of that in his playing." 

On the other end of this spectrum, Q expresses admiration for Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang, whom he also got to perform for on the UK television show The Piano in 2024, which he mentions with retrospective disbelief. "That was crazy," he says simply, as though it just happened yesterday. “He’s a master of piano, and the way he plays has always fascinated me.”

Through his own experience of playing piano and his extensive observation of the greats, Q identifies it as the only appropriate instrument for what he’s trying to do, and what he’s trying to say. "I feel like it's the most versatile instrument,” he notes. “It’s got the biggest range.”

“With the piano, because of the way it's played with two hands, you have this room to really express whatever you want to express,” he continues. “I know the piano just feels like an extension of my body now. I play every day, so I feel like I learn about it and get to know it more and more." It’s how he could articulate the complex lyrical worlds of hip-hop music, or the jovial beats of pop icons into instrumentals with great depth; instrumentals that resonate with millions of people.

Production has taken this a step further and allowed Q to tap into a sound that feels like his own. "With technology, with production, there are so many ways that you can make your piano sound way more unique,” he muses. “Depending on what sustain you want, the hammer sounds, there are so many things you can tweak in actual software that you can really come up with your own piano. And that's actually the most fun that I have when I'm writing music, spending time tweaking the actual sound.”

What draws him specifically to instrumental music as the vehicle for what he wants to say is the fact that it stays open, notably with the option to approach sound in such a broad manner. No lyrics means no fixed meaning – and that openness is the very point: "The thing with instrumental music, and I guess the music that I make, is that people who come to the shows, even though they're all in the same space, someone might interpret that song in a totally different way than someone else,” Q explains. “Someone might feel really melancholic, and then someone else might feel really hopeful and really joyous about it. When people tell me, 'Oh, this song made me think of this,' I'll be like, well, that's not why I wrote it, but now that you said that, I can sort of see that. There's no right or wrong with music.”

Lifestream, his debut EP released in October 2025, laid the groundwork for the pianist’s sound. The album only consists of piano, which was a deliberate choice. Lifestream 2 picks up from there, offering five new compositions that keep the instrument central, but also show a desire for expansion. 

"It was really important for my first projects to just be piano, because that's like the basis of my career," he explains. “But on Lifestream 2, I get a little bit more experimental. There are a couple of tracks where there are samples. One of the tracks starts as a siren sample and turns into a piano song, and at the end of "Glitches”, we glitch out the piano completely, where it just doesn't sound like a piano anymore." The two EPs sit together as a pair, offering a rounded introduction to an artist who is just getting started: ”They're very much like one whole project in a way. Very much just like: this is what I'm about, this is the type of music and sound that I can bring. Lifestream 2 is definitely me gearing up to add way more elements in my music.”

There's an album in the works that he clearly wants to talk about, but regardless of his excitement, the topic is hush-hush. What Q can disclose, however, is that “it will be the best thing he's ever made”. For now, the two EPs are what he's offering as his major statement, and thematically they orbit the same questions –  questions around searching, those that he often ponders alone. 

”I’ve been thinking so much about even deeper questions, Like, why we're here, where we even come from, why is there even something here to begin with as opposed to there having been nothing?” He says, pensively. “I sit with these all the time, by myself, and I just want to express those feelings through music. Those themes of time and cycles are like the overarch of everything around us." 

The opening track to Lifestream 2, “Raindrops”, came directly out of that thinking as a standout song. As piano notes trickle with a hypnotic rise and fall throughout the number, Q replicates the flow of the water cycle, ocean to sky, to earth, and back, as a way of thinking about the fact that life just keeps moving. "It's a reminder that life and time never really stop moving," he affirms.

Although he’s cultivated a distinct live presence over the years, touring has allowed Q to see how his openness about these questions truly allows him to connect with his audience. He came back from the European dates with a lot of stories, and the overarching experience that he keeps returning to is people approaching him afterwards to say his music had changed something for them. 

"People came up to me, and they were like, ‘Your music saved my life,' or 'It made me fall back into piano, start playing again.' Just knowing that what I can come up with in my head seems to resonate with people is such a surreal feeling,” he observes, recounting the run-ins fondly. It's more validating, he says, than anything the covers ever gave him, because this is actually his. The impact is completely his own. 

And ultimately, this live connection has shifted his thinking about what he wants out of sharing his music. ”Not to be deep,” he laughs, “But it goes back to what were some of the first things that we used to do as beings — when we used to live in caves, we used to sing together around fires. I just feel like music is meant to be shared in real life. I'm tired of sharing it online. I mean, I still will, and it's important to do that, but I want to play for people in real life. I want to feel people's energies in real life. Every show was different, depending on the people that were there and present in that room and that space.”

For much of his life, a version of Friqtao existed that spent a lot of time not doing this. With an early wound to his pride, his passion was on the periphery, and he found himself worrying rather than living and missing the present moment. But now, that worry doesn’t matter. He’s found his harmony. Or more aptly, his lifestream. 

“If I could, I would tell younger me not to worry and to focus more on living in today,” Q admits. “I spent a lot of time when I was younger worrying about things. I missed out on a lot of life that I could have lived in the present moment. So just soak up everything happening today, and never stop believing in yourself. Everything stems from the mind, and everything stems from your self-belief.” 

Making music, he says, is what quieted that noise for him. It brought him back to the present. And rather than providing an answer to the big questions, which he doesn't expect to resolve, it has given resounding weight to the personal one of all. "It has given meaning to my life,” Q states, with pride and assurance. “I know now that whenever I'm making music, writing music, sharing music, performing, playing for other people, that's when I feel the most alive."