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Adopt-A-Competitor returns to local libraries this year, inviting you to see two of the 2025 competitors—Xuanxiang Wang and Jiarui Cheng—perform 20 minutes each ahead of the upcoming 2025 Cliburn Competition. Bring your friends and family for this fun culturally inspired program.

Lewis Warren, Jr. is an award-winning pianist, arranger, composer, and improviser based in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. He started piano lessons at 8 years old and has since won competitions, recorded albums, and performed on television. His flexible music skills and powerful ability to connect with diverse audiences have been hallmarks of his career.

Cliburn Social is an all-ages, specially curated, classical experience of cool performances paired with opportunities to hang out, learn more about classical music + make new friends.

Milan native Francesco Granata’s journey with music began when he was 5 and has not stopped since. He graduated from the Milan Conservatory in 2016, with the highest evaluation and special mention. He then had the opportunity to study under two distinguished Cliburn laureates: Benedetto Lupo at the St. Cecilia Academy in Rome, where he obtained the Master Course Diploma, and—now—Roberto Plano at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

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

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.

Decca Classics has announced the forthcoming release of one of the most talked-about performances in recent classical music history: Yunchan Lim’s electrifying interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, recorded live with Marin Alsop and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra during the Final Round of the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, when he was just 18 years old.

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).

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