I had the extreme honor of being the photographer along with my good friend Ellen Appel, to photograph the finalists of this year’s Van Cliburn Competition. For those of you who may not know, the Van Cliburn Competition is the Olympics for Pianists. During the Cold War, Van Cliburn won an international piano competition hosted in Russia. Ever since, the Cliburn Competition is hosted every four years. Pianists from 12 different countries compete in 5 different locations around the world to be recognized as the greatest piano players. Then the top 30 pianists get invited to Fort Worth Texas. The players compete to be narrowed down to the top 6 finalists, and finally a third, second, and first place winner. This was an amazing cultural experience for me as I was able to photograph the finalists from 6 different countries. We photographed all of the images the finalists would use for future marketing, posters, flyers, album covers, etc. A few months before this years competition Mr. Van Cliburn passed away. In memory to him, I thought it could be unique if we photographed the three winners in the estate of Van Cliburn himself! Ellen worked her magic granting the permission to photograph the winners!  You’ll have to stay tuned for these images. Below is a  group image from the event, including all six finalists. Then a few photographs of the finalists themselves. Stay tuned for the posts about the three winners! We’re going to do a special on each of them!

 

(From Right to Left: Beatrice Rana, Nikita Mnoyants, Vadym Kholodenko, Sean Chang, Fei Fei Dong, Tomoki Sakata)

Keep checking back to our blog for special posts on the three winners, and photographs taken at Van Cliburn’s Estate!