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These five gold medalists run the gamut in terms of personality and performance style. That no two of them sound alike is one of the Cliburn's proudest claims, and their artistic voices paved the way to even brighter futures.

Application & Rules for the 2025 Cliburn Competition

2025 Cliburn Competitor Jonathan Mamora

Learn more about the flagship Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, as well as the Junior and Amateur Competition.

Taking a simple theme and writing variations on it is like catnip for composers. Almost no composer can resist the chance to display compositional chops, and these magnificent sets are written with maximum enjoyment (for pianist and listener) in mind.

Tokyo-born Yuki Yoshimi did not decide to pursue music professionally; he first “met the piano” at a friend’s house when he was 5 years old and has “loved the piano since then.” A graduate of the Toho Gakuen School of Music, where he worked with Hisako Ueno and Kei Itoh, his studies eventually brought him to the United States; he has attended the New England Conservatory of Music under Alexander Korsantia since 2020.

Info for Educators

2025 Competition Artistic Collaborators

Albert Cano Smit has “established himself as an artist to watch” (Montreal Gazette), having won first prizes at the 2019 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the 2017 Walter W. Naumburg Piano Competition, the latter of which earned him a Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall. He was also awarded the prestigious Arthur Rubinstein Piano Prize from The Juilliard School in 2020, and had strong finishes in the 2017 Montreal and 2016 Hilton Head competitions.

When she was 6, Elizaveta Kliuchereva—who was born in Moscow into a family of visual artists—was walking in the corridors of her art school and found a very old piano standing in the corner. She says: “From the moment I saw the piano and opened the keyboard, I realized that it is going to be my life, and I would not be able to live without music.”