Press Room

Cliburn Foundation Hosts 50th Anniversary Gala

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

February 7, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Contacts:
Maggie Estes, Director of Marketing and Public Relations,
mestes@cliburn.org, 817.738.6536 (o), 817.739.0459 (c)

Nikki Scandalios, National Publicist,
nikki@scandaliospr.com, 704.340.4094

Fort Worth, Texas, February 7, 2012-The Van Cliburn Foundation will celebrate its 50th Anniversary with a festive Gala, to be held Saturday, March 3, 2012 at 7 p.m. at the Water Gardens Plaza entrance to the Fort Worth Convention Center. The black-tie party, which will hearken back to the Eisenhower/Kennedy era of the Competition's inception, is chaired by dedicated Cliburn volunteers Tina Harrison Gorski, Whitney Hyder More, and Martha Schutts Williams. The Foundation will welcome a host of honored guests, including Gold Medalists Ralph Votapek (1962), Cristina Ortiz (1966), Vladimir Viardo (1973), André-Michel Schub (1981), José Feghali (1985), Simone Pedroni (1993), and Alexander Kobrin (2005).

Richard Flowers, of The Events Company in Houston, will transform the space into the perfect atmosphere for this celebration of a half decade of memories, highlighting the great moments and the remarkable personalities that have defined the competition and the Foundation. Chef David Andrews, who has recently come to Fort Worth from the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, is designing the elegant dinner menu, and The Starlight Experience, America's premier cover band, will set the mood with high-energy performances of dance music-from Motown to Rock, Disco to Hip-Hop, and Top 40 to the Great American Songbook.

The First Van Cliburn International Piano Competition began September 24, 1962, in Fort Worth, Texas, at TCU's Ed Landreth Auditorium. In its 50 years, the Cliburn has produced 13 international piano competitions; over 40 commercial audio recordings of selected competition performances; 9 full-length documentaries chronicling the competitions since 1977, and 2 six-part series, Concerto with James Conlon in 2001, and Encore! With James Conlon in 2005; scores of national radio broadcasts of the competitions since 1985; 4 Internet broadcasts of the competitions since 1997; 10 commissioned pieces by American composers for the first 10 competitions, and competitions for new works for the 2001, 2005, and 2009 Competitions, awarding 13 American composers; 81 finalists, including 40 medalists, who gave approximately 4,000 Cliburn-arranged performances following their wins; 6 International Piano Competitions for Outstanding Amateurs™; 1 live Internet broadcast of the Amateur Competition in 2011; 35 years of Cliburn Concerts, featuring national and international artists with over 325 performances since 1976; and annual educational outreach programs, notably Musical Awakenings® since 2001.

ABOUT THE VAN CLIBURN FOUNDATION
 The Van Cliburn Foundation disseminates classical music worldwide, and nurtures and launches young artists' careers through the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the ensuing three-year international concert tours of its medalists, award-winning documentaries, radio broadcasts, and a live webcast that extends its outreach to listeners around the world. In 2009, over 2,857,573 total streams were delivered to viewers from 157 countries/territories.

The Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition will take place May 24-June 9, 2013, at Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall and will welcome 30 of the world's finest young pianists to Texas. Continuing its longstanding commitment to new music, the Cliburn has selected composer Christopher Theofanidis to write the commissioned work that will be performed by all competitors during the Semifinal Round. Additionally, the Competition has been dedicated to showcasing both the extraordinary talent of its competitors in recital performance as well as their ability to collaborate with other musicians. The Fourteenth Competition will mark the first Cliburn appearance by the world-renowned Brentano String Quartet performing a piano quintet with each of the 12 semifinalists. The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, which has appeared at
every Cliburn Competition, will perform two concerti with each of the six finalists, under the baton of Maestro Leonard Slatkin for the first time. Maestro John Giordano will serve as chairman of the jury for his eleventh Competition since assuming the post in 1973.

For audiences in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, the Van Cliburn Foundation promotes great music and world-class artists through the annual Cliburn Concerts series. It reaches 33,000 elementary school students annually with the education programs of Musical Awakenings. In 1999, it established the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, which The Boston Globe proclaimed "a celebration of music, and the people who have to make music, no matter what." The sixth Amateur Competition was held May 23-29, 2011, at Ed Landreth Auditorium on the campus of TCU.

Visit Cliburn.org to learn more about the Cliburn during its 50th Anniversary year in 2012.

Official Sponsors of the Van Cliburn Foundation are:

American Airlines

Amon G. Carter Foundation

Ann L. & Carol Green Rhodes Charitable Trust, Bank of America, Trustee

Arts Council of Fort Worth & Tarrant County

Crystelle Waggoner Charitable Trust, Bank of America, Trustee

ExxonMobil

JPMorgan Chase Foundation

Sid W. Richardson Foundation

The Burnett Foundation

The Pangburn Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, N.A., Trustee

XTO Energy Inc.

 

Exclusive Print Media Sponsor

Star-Telegram

 

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