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When Arseniy Gusev was 5 years old, an upright piano was brought into his St. Petersburg home, and he immediately started playing and experimenting with it. He wrote his first piece—a romance on a Pushkin poem—shortly thereafter, and his grandmother asked him if he would like to go to music school. He went on to study both composition and piano performance at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Upon graduation in 2018, he moved to the United States, where he attends the Cleveland Institute of Music, under the tutelage of Sergei Babayan (piano) and Keith Fitch (composition).

Yangrui Cai began his piano studies at age 4, though none of his family had any music- or art-related background. When he was 15, a first-place finish in the national auditions earned him a spot in China’s Xinghai Conservatory of Music Middle School. Upon his graduation with distinction in July 2019, the Hunan native was admitted to several prestigious conservatories in the United States with full scholarships. He is currently a third-year undergraduate student at Oberlin Conservatory, under the tutelage of 2001 Cliburn Gold Medalist Stanislav Ioudenitch.

Read the latest in competition announcements, career updates from medalists, profiles on the Cliburn community, and local concerts.

Seoul native Jinhyung Park began studying piano at the age of 5 and made his recital debut 10 years later. After completing his bachelor’s degree in piano performance at Yonsei University under the tutelage of Ian Yungwook Yoo, he moved to Germany to study with Arie Vardi at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover.

Christopher Elton was born in Edinburgh and received most of his musical education at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he achieved the unusual distinction of gaining the Academy’s highest performing award – the Dip. RAM – on both piano and cello.

The list of Cliburn's Board of Directors, Van Cliburn Advisory Council, and Cliburn Honorary Council.

Born in Qinhuangdao, Xiaolu Zang was 4 years old when an electric keyboard caught his attention. He eventually attended the Beijing Central Music Conservatory Middle School for seven years under Professor Ye Lin and won first prizes in several major Chinese competitions. It was during that time, at the age of 15, that he recalls a singular day when he determined himself to become a professional musician. That commitment took him to Germany in 2017, where he studies with Arie Vardi at Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover.

In Honggi Kim’s childhood home in Wonju, his sister played an electric keyboard; his parents then encouraged him to start learning the instrument after he played the same pieces she did, on his own, by ear. During his middle school years at art school in Seoul, he also studied composition, which he credits with deepening his understanding of music and its logic, so that he could develop his own interpretations.

Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Alessio Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions, and is now a familiar face on five continents, not only as a recitalist and chamber musician, but also as a concerto soloist who has appeared with more than 150 orchestras, including the London, Royal, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the Boston, Dallas, Cincinnati, Sydney, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras, and the NHK Symphony in Japan, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Marin Alsop, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, Fabio Luisi, Sir Simon Rattle, Yuri Temirkanov, and Jaap van Zweden.

Sergey Tanin started piano lessons when he was 5 years old, and—though his parents were not musicians and never pushed him to practice—his commitment to the instrument grew quickly. By age 9, he had decided to be a pianist. Growing up in Yakutia in far Eastern Russia, a long way from major cities and the concerts they might offer, he drew inspiration from recordings by great artists, such as Argerich, Pletnev, Michelangeli, and Rubinstein. He was “taken by the power of music.”