The festival is a crucial part of the Cliburn Junior experience and allows the 24 competitors and 14 non-competing participants opportunities to engage with the local community and learn from some of the world’s top pianists and teachers through master classes, workshops, artist conversations, and community performances. Featuring Daniel Hsu, Rachel Naomi Kudo, Sean Chen, Orion Weiss, Gilbert Kalish, Anne-Marie McDermott, and Alexander Kobrin.
The Junior Competition and Festival was established in 2015 as another means for the Cliburn to use its standing and expertise to encourage tomorrow’s great artists, to provide a valuable forum for them to express themselves, and to give them an entrance to the next step of their journeys. Key ingredients were top international jurors, the media and webcast, Final Round performances with orchestra, and the festival atmosphere, which included performance experience and artistic workshops—all put in place to make the program significantly useful for students with aspirations of being professional musicians.