Fans of “American Idol” recognize Nate Tao, a Reston native who auditioned for this season’s “American Idol” and received a ticket to Hollywood. He went to Herndon High School and currently works as a musician in Los Angeles.

 What people do not know about him is that he grew up with two deaf parents.

 “My parents taught me sign language ever since I was a toddler in a crib,” Tao said. “It was my first language so we never had any problems communicating.”

 Tao is also an American Sign Language teacher and teaches ASL twice a week privately.

 “ASL is such a beautiful language that I think gets overlooked in school,” Tao said.

 According to Tao, the main reason ASL is overlooked is there is no country today that has ASL as its primary language, only the deaf culture seems to use it. Even so, Tao thinks there are many reasons to learn ASL in school.

 “People think it’s easy to learn, but there is so much more to it than that,” Tao said. “It builds dexterity with the hands and sharpens your thinking skills because it is grammatically different than English.”

 Non-deaf people do not find that many reasons to take an ASL class, because they do not need to use it later in life.  However, to Tao, that is not true. “ASL can lead to lucrative careers such as interpreting,” Tao said. “The demand for interpreters for the deaf is very high while the supply for interpreters remains low.”

 Aside from being an ASL teacher, Tao is a successful musician. For Tao, though, it is disappointing that his parents cannot hear him sing.

 “It’s something that I’ve lived with for so long that I’ve learned to accept it,” Tao said. “All I can do is give them the lyrics so they can understand the message of the song, but even though it’s hard sometimes, we are still very lucky and we don’t let it hold us down.

 Tao uses his knowledge of ASL in his music, because it is heavily based on facial expression.

  “When I perform, I always try to look at people’s faces and try to connect with them,” Tao said. “I want to convey emotion through my voice and face to look for a response when I look into the audience.”

 Tao’s claim to fame was this season of “American Idol,” where he sang to the judges and made his way to the solo round before getting eliminated.

  “I had tried out for reality singing shows in the past without success. I passed the chance to audition on American Idol but this year I decided to audition,” Tao said.

“I decided to audition this year because I realized I had a blessing to instill people’s emotions with my voice because of an elderly gentleman that told me after one of my shows, that I had a gift from God. He told me to never stop singing.”

 Tao called that moment as strange yet a defining and enlightening moment in his career.

 After that, Tao booked his ticket to Oklahoma after he found out that there was one audition left in Oklahoma City.

“The rest is history,” Tao said.

 Tao left “American Idol” with no regrets, just more motivation to continue his singing passion.

 “I performed with everything I had and put everything out there for the judges to see,” Tao said. “Just because you get turned down doesn’t mean you should give up.”

 Tao has many goals for his career, such as getting his music placed in television, movies, writing music and tours, or even scoring a record deal.

 “There are so many possibilities so I am very excited for the future,” said Tao.