John Wilson still doesn’t know where it came from. At 12 years old, he had the inexplicable urge to play the piano. He didn’t have any musicians in his family, and his only musical experience had been reluctantly playing the trombone in a marching band.

But, after getting a cheap light-up keyboard from his parents, something special happened.

“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “I hit a button. It played back a Mozart sonata. I played it back after one hearing, and I had never played the piano before.”

A lot has changed since that moment in his childhood — with his talents on the piano taking him around the world — but his love of Mozart has not.

Later this week, the Mill Valley pianist will perform as part of the 51st Midsummer Mozart Festival, a festival that celebrates Mozart through orchestral performances, at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Berkeley City Club; at 6:45 p.m. Saturday at the Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma; and at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga.

“The festival has an amazing history. I’m honored to work with such wonderful musicians on some of the greatest music ever written. Mozart’s music still sounds fresh and exciting even these hundreds of years later,” said guest conductor Ryan Murray, who makes his debut at the festival this week.

“Piano Concerto No. 23 might be my favorite of the later piano concertos. The second movement is one of the most poignant and beautiful things Mozart ever wrote. I’m so looking forward to performing this with John. The piece has wonderful features for both the soloist and the orchestra.”

Admission is $25 to $91, depending on the show. Get tickets and more information at midsummermozart.org.

With the piano concerto, Wilson is tackling a Mozart piece that’s “one of his most beloved works, recognized by audiences everywhere.”

“I’m truly thrilled to share my interpretation of this beautiful and deeply moving piece,” said Wilson, who won the 2023 The American Prize: Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music.

Closer to home, Wilson is immersed in the symphonic world, performing regularly with the Marin Symphony and San Francisco Symphony.

“Since winning the audition for the principal piano position in the Marin Symphony in 2022, John Wilson has become one of the orchestra’s most prominent and beloved musicians, performing not only with the orchestra but also in chamber music and as a concerto soloist. This season, he’ll be joining the Marin Symphony in its November concerts with a pair of Liszt piano/orchestral blockbusters, ‘Hungarian Fantasy’ and ‘Totentanz,’” said Tod Brody, Marin Symphony Association’s executive director.

Ahead of his upcoming shows, he spoke about how Mozart inspires him, getting his start as a jazz pianist and more.

Q What drew you to music?

A As a little kid, I wanted to be a rocket scientist or brain surgeon. Both of those you deal with your hands; they take things apart in some way. In a way, I feel like I take music apart, and I break it down and I rebuild it. It quickly turned into an obsession.

Q How has your relationship with Mozart changed or deepened over the years?

A When you play his music, you can’t help but feel happier. Mozart’s one of those handful of composers where no matter what you play in the output, you sense the genius. You sense the joy. It’s like you can feel his love of music. It always brought me that love and joy of music. When I was in the conservatory at Peabody, I studied all the Mozart sonatas and a number of the concertos, but I was really hesitant to play Mozart in big performances because that’s the double-edged sword of Mozart. He really exposes every weakness and every strength in a musician. There’s something so perfect about Mozart that you just feel like you’re dealing with this thing that is on the verge of breaking. But if you can somehow show it to a listener in its pure, perfect form, you really feel Mozart at his best. He’s been a constant inspiration. I got into reading Mozart’s letters. I’m curious what Mozart was like as a person. And you start to realize there are a lot of human elements, a lot of things that are not so perfect in life, and it does come out in his music. The second movement of this piece in the festival epitomizes that. You leave with this feeling of everything’s right in the world, but you also get that Mozart was just a regular human being, too, and all the things that we feel he felt, which is why I think we love his music.

Q You’ve spoken about wanting to create and perform music that speaks to current times. Is Mozart able to do that?

A Absolutely. Emotion in music is not time-specific because human beings are always human beings. If you can present it in a way that’s honest to when he was writing it and then somehow bring a piece of you without getting in the way of Mozart, you can have a nod to the past and a nod to the present. I’ve been inspired by many great musicians and conductors, and I’ve realized that the greatest musicians are the ones who start right at the most simple idea, which is to think about how beautiful it is that we’re making music and just get to that innocent state and then start to interpret the music.

Q You started as a jazz pianist. How did that develop into your work now?

A I started late when I was 12, and I didn’t have many years before the auditions for college came up. At that point, I had to make a decision: classical or jazz? Until about age 17, I was heavily in both worlds. I even had a jazz trio called the Crazy Jay Fast Fingers Trio. We’d do “How High the Moon” at the fastest possible speed, like a gimmick. I learned “Rhapsody in Blue,” and I thought, this is kind of jazzy but also classical. I think that pushed me more firmly into classical music. My family would always take me to Broadway shows on the weekends. I would go into New York for lessons. My uncle, a huge Broadway fan, would take me to these shows. So I actually have a really big Broadway as well as a jazz underpinning. Even now, I play jazz shows at jazz clubs in San Francisco once or twice a month.

Q Tell me something you’ve learned from your mentor, Michael Tilson Thomas, whom you met in 2015 while you were a fellow at the New World Symphony.

A Boy, can he put on a show. He would always say, “Don’t forget that you could smile onstage, and it actually might make the sound better.” I go right into the music, and I just hope that I take the audience for the ride they want to go along for. If I’m into the music, I’ll be doing entertaining things.

Other shows

Wilson will perform at the San Francisco Philharmonic’s “Beethoven Triple Concerto” at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Get tickets ($30) and more information at sfphil.org.

Wilson will perform as part of Marin Symphony’s “Masterworks 1: Liszt & Brahms” at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 8 and 3 p.m. Nov. 9 at College of Marin’s James Dunn Theatre in Kentfield. Subscriptions are available in early August; single tickets go on sale on Sept. 2. More information at marinsymphony.org.

More information at johnwilsonpiano.com. His music can be found on Spotify and other streaming platforms.