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2025 Cliburn Competitor Evren Ozel

Dmytro Choni took home bronze at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June 2022, only the second Ukrainian pianist to medal at the prestigious contest. He won hearts and accolades with a compelling and colorful musicality that is fortified by a genuine, immediately engaging stage presence. As one critic noted: “Each time he strode onstage, it was with winning confidence and a big smile. He’s clearly an accomplished, assured―and communicative—pro” (Dallas Morning News).

The complete collection of Cliburn Competition documentary films, from the first release in 1977 to 2022's Crescendo.

Your guide to Fort Worth during the 2025 Cliburn Competition

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.

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.

Marcel Tadokoro was born in Fukuoka, Japan, into a “literary family:” neither his French mother nor Japanese father are musicians. But he studied piano and had the opportunity to give a small public concert when he was 8; he says that was the moment he “immediately understood this would be my life.”

The medalists of the 2022 Cliburn Competition—Yunchan Lim, Anna Geniushene, and Dmytro Choni—announce new dates for their 2024–2025 performance tours, including recent and upcoming highlights.

Family Concerts

The Cliburn International Competition for Conductors in June 2028 will be the first major international conducting competition in North America. The new event represents another major expansion for the Cliburn’s almost 65-year-old history: the creation of a new top-level contest as well as the production of its first large-scale project in Houston, Texas.