carried on:

May 31, 2008 - Dr. Christopher Shih, a gastroenterologist who also knows his way around the works of Chopin and Bach, won the Van Cliburn Foundation’s first YouTube piano contest for amateurs aged 35 and over, the organization said yesterday.

Shih’s winning entry, posted on Google Inc.’s YouTube, was a video of his solo piano performance of Los Requiebros from the piano suite Goyescas written by Spanish composer Enrique Granados.

Shih received 701 votes out of the 2389 ballots cast online, the Fort Worth, Texas-based foundation said.
There were 41 contestants.

The entry was taped last year at the Boston International Competition for Exceptional Amateurs, where Shih won first prize.

“I was very pleased to hear I won,” Shih, 35, a specialist at the Maryland Digestive Disease Center, said in a phone interview.

“I try to play at the highest possible level because this music is wonderful, complex literature that has been composed by geniuses. We owe it to ourselves.”

The Van Cliburn Foundation is best known for its competition for professional pianists started in 1962 to find and nurture young classical musicians.

The foundation’s International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs began in 1999 and is held every four years. Shih’s win gains him automatic entry to the next one in 2011.

The YouTube contest was launched in February to allow non-professionals to compete more regularly, said Sevan Melikyan, a foundation spokesman, in a phone interview.

The prize doesn’t come with a cash award.

The foundation is named after Cliburn, a Louisiana-born prodigy who won the first Tchaikovsky competition for piano in Moscow in 1958 and returned to the US a hero.

Shih, a Chicago native who now lives in Ellicott City, Maryland, about 20 minutes from Baltimore, started playing piano when he was 5 years old.

He graduated from Harvard College in 1993, attended medical school at Johns Hopkins University and went to the University of Pennsylvania for a residency in internal medicine.

He took a decade-long break from the piano after his medical studies because of his rigorous training schedule.

The father of two daughters, Shih said he doesn’t have time to practice for hours a day but will go into cram mode if he has a performance coming up.

Currently, he plans to perform two to three times a year and may play at the Sorbonne in Paris in October.

Yet Shih is not ready to put away his medical instruments to become a full-time musician.

“I’m always going to be a doctor,” Shih said. “Pianists have a hard time finding professional engagements, and I’m limited in what I can accept.”

BLOOMBERG

June 3, 2008- Dr. Christopher Shih of Maryland won the Van Cliburn Foundation’s first YouTube piano contest for amateurs. His day job? Gastroenterologist.

Here he is in action:

carried in:

(reprint)

by Chris Pasles

May 31, 2008- YouTube viewers chose Maryland gastroenterologist Christopher Shih, 35, as the winner in the Van Cliburn Foundation’s first cyberspace contest for amateur classical pianists.

Shih’s winning entry shows him playing “Los requiebros” from Granados’ “Goyescas.” Shih, a Harvard graduate who works at the Maryland Digestive Disease Center, was one of 41 pianists, 35 and older, from Italy, Japan, Mexico, Romania and the United States, who submitted 5- to 10-minute performance videos for the online competition.

Shih’s prize will be to compete on stage at the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in 2011 in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Baltimore Sun
by Tim Smith

May 30, 2008- A gastroenterologist from Maryland, Christopher Shih, has been named winner of the first YouTube Conest for amateur pianists, presented by the Van Cliburn Foundation in Fort Worth, Texas. His entry was an assured and colorful performance of Los requiebros from Goyescas by Granados. Dr. Shih, 35, will now gain automatic entry, application fee-free, to the next Cliburn International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in 2011. About 2,400 people voted online, choosing among 41 amateurs (age 35 and older) who uploaded video performances of 5-10 minutes in length on YouTube. Dr. Shih, who earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins, is affiliated with the Maryland Digestive Disease Center, which has offices in Ellicott City, Laurel and Takoma Park.

The YouTube contest provides extra attention to the Cliburn competition for amateurs; a second such contest will be held in 2009. The foundation’s primary work, of course, remains the Cliburn International Piano Competition, named after the sensational American pianist Van Cliburn, who won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958.

KERA Art & Seek
by Olin Chism

May 30th, 2008- Christopher Shih, a 35-year-old gastroenterologist from Maryland, has won the first YouTube Contest for amateur pianists sponsored by the Van Cliburn Foundation. He will receive automatic entry into the sixth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, which will be held in Fort Worth in the spring of 2011.

Shih, who received a B.A. in biochemistry from Harvard and his M.D. from Johns Hopkins, competed in the 10th Van Cliburn International Competition in 1997. In the YouTube Contest he received 701 votes out of 2,389 cast. To see and hear his winning performance, click here.

By Chris Shull

May 30, 2008- FORT WORTH — Classical music fans can go to YouTube.com, the popular video Web site, to see performances by Van Cliburn, Lang Lang, Arthur Rubinstein and other famous pianists.

Now Christopher Shih, a physician who lives in Maryland, has a pretty big presence on the site, too. Friday, he was named winner of the Van Cliburn Foundation’s first YouTube Piano Contest.

Shih, 35, was among 41 amateur pianists ages 35 to 70 who submitted performance videos to the Cliburn’s first-ever Internet competition. (Participants had to be at least 35 to enter.) YouTube users were invited to vote for their favorites, and during online voting May 1-15, Shih’s performance of Los Requiebros from Goyescas by Enrique Granados received 701 of the 2,389 votes cast. (To watch his performances, go to YouTube.com and search for “Christopher Shih.”) His performance of Los Requiebros can be seen below.

Shih’s prize is automatic entry into the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs to be held in Fort Worth in June 2011.

“These things are really just for fun,” Shih said in a phone interview. “But even though it is fun, I do strive to play at the highest possible artistic level.”

Shih, a gastroenterologist, is married to Maya Shih, a violinist; they have two daughters, ages 6 and 3. He was a contestant at the Tenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1997 — he took a year off from medical school to prepare — but did not advance past the preliminary round. He was named winner of amateur piano competitions in Washington, D.C., in 2006 and in Boston in 2007. Shih said entering contests and competitions keeps him motivated to practice.

“I always intended to become a doctor, but I’ve always loved music and have done it as a hobby,” Shih said.

Sevan Melikyan, director of marketing at the Cliburn Foundation, said Internet sites such as YouTube and MySpace are great tools to promote classical music. “You create an immediate [online] community — by the dialogue you create, by the opinions you express, by ratings,” Melikyan said.

During the Cliburn’s YouTube Contest, contestants’ videos were accessed more than 60,700 times. Shih’s clip received more than 3,000 page views. The Cliburn will hold another YouTube Contest in 2009.

“It’s a way for us to get to share our playing with each other, a way of getting people to listen to our piano music,” Shih said. Also online: www.cliburn.org

A New YouTube Contest Brings to Mind
Van Cliburn and the Price of Success

by Terry Teachout

March 15, 2008- Fifty years ago next month, a 23-year-old whiz kid from Texas won the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow, instantaneously becoming America’s best-known classical musician and earning a hatful of money in the process. Van Cliburn, then as now a generous man, thereupon started his own piano competition, hoping to give other gifted young artists the same opportunity that the Tchaikovsky Competition had given him. Mr. Cliburn hasn’t played regularly in public since 1978, but the Van Cliburn Competition is still doing business in Fort Worth, and it’s celebrating the anniversary of his Cold War triumph by launching a new venture that would have been unthinkable in 1958: the Cliburn YouTube Contest, in which amateur pianists over the age of 35 shoot videos of their own playing and upload them to www.youtube.com/vancliburnfoundation, where computer-savvy music lovers will view them and pick a winner.

The Van Cliburn Foundation, which runs the Cliburn Competition, admits that its YouTube Contest is a gimmick — but a well-meaning one. Its purpose is to publicize another of the Cliburn Foundation’s undertakings, the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, which won’t be held again until 2011. “We created the YouTube contest to inspire and motivate amateur pianists to practice and perfect their skills continually until the main competition takes place,” says Sevan Melikyan, the foundation’s director of marketing. The winner will receive a cash prize of $2,000 and be entered in the next Amateur Competition, which is open to any over-35 classical pianist who doesn’t earn a living as a musician.

After winning the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow, Van Cliburn (left) is congratulated by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (second from right).

How does it work? Simply make a video of yourself playing between five and 10 minutes’ worth of classical music. (The camera angle must show your hands and face simultaneously, thus proving that you’re doing your own playing.) Upload it to YouTube by April 30. The videos will be available for viewing the next day, and viewers can register by email to vote for the pianist of their choice. The winner will be announced on May 30. Go to www.cliburn.org for more details.

So far as I know, the Cliburn YouTube Contest is the first such event of its kind, but the Cliburn Foundation has been holding amateur competitions since 1999. Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times’s senior art critic, was one of the finalists that year, and his participation, not surprisingly, brought the competition a fair amount of press coverage. I expect that the YouTube Contest will have the same effect — as well it should. It is an idea so self-evidently ingenious that your immediate response will probably be to wonder why nobody ever thought of such a thing before.

I have less clear-cut feelings about the Amateur Competition itself, however. Seven years ago I sat on the jury for a jazz piano competition and came away as dubious about the virtues of artistic competitions as I’d been when I started. Does it really advance the cause of art to treat musicians, painters or novelists as if they were beauty-pageant contestants? Very likely not — but such undertakings will always be with us, for there is something in the nature of head-to-head competition that audiences find inherently exciting. That’s why I agreed to serve as a judge: I thought it my duty to see how the process worked in practice. Yet I still felt equivocal about what I was doing. In a race, somebody always comes in first; in art, nobody does. Why, then, encourage amateurs to put themselves through the wringer of a high-profile competition? Might the experience diminish their passion for the artistic endeavors to which they freely devote such big chunks of their lives?

That Van Cliburn should be lending his name to the YouTube Contest is ironic, for he is one of the saddest examples of the damage that can be done to a serious artist who unexpectedly hits the celebrity jackpot. In 1958 he became a media idol, and for a decade and a half managed to keep his head above the high waters of renown. As late as 1973, he was still recording albums like “My Favorite Brahms” that left listeners in no possible doubt of his great gifts. But Mr. Cliburn’s fame wore him out. His playing became noticeably inconsistent in quality, and in 1978 he took a “sabbatical” (as he called it) from which he never really returned, though he still performs in public from time to time. What should have been a great career ended up being . . . well, something less than that.

Needless to say, the winner of the Cliburn YouTube Contest isn’t going to end up gracing the cover of Time or playing on “The Tonight Show,” the way Mr. Cliburn did a half-century ago. And I doubt that the contest itself will have any dire effects on the culture of classical music. But those who take part in it would still do well to keep in mind the origin of the word “amateur,” which is derived from amator, the Latin word for “lover.” Bad things can happen to love when money changes hands.

Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, writes “Sightings” every other Saturday and blogs about the arts at www.terryteachout.com. Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.

Van Cliburn Foundation holds a talent search on YouTube
By Diane Haithman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Inspired not by “Idol” but by Popsearch 2007, an online talent search sponsored by the Boston Popsthe Van Cliburn Foundation has taken its competition into cyberspace with its first YouTube contest for amateur classical pianists.

The celebrated Cliburn Competition, which leads to lucrative recording and performance contracts for medalists and finalists, will continue to select participants based on a traditional application and audition process. But for its next amateur competition, to take place in Fort Worth in 2011, the foundation will make room for one competitor who will be selected via popular vote based on YouTube videos provided by 41 hopeful pianists who are older than 35.

Anyone with an e-mail account has until May 15 to visit www.cliburn.org and cast a vote on the videos, which became available to viewers Thursday and run five to 10 minutes each. The winner will gain automatic entry into the next competition, and the foundation will waive the entry fee of about $80.

Cliburn Foundation spokesman Sevan Melikyan acknowledges that voters will probably not watch all 41 videos before voting.

“We are aware of the fact that this competition can very easily become a popularity contest. We are not going to hide from the fact that if you have a lot of friends out there, they are going to vote for you,” he said Thursday. But he said that, in classical music, entrants as well as voters are likely to be self-selecting, and he believes it unlikely that a performer without merit will end up on the competition stage.

Because the Cliburn Competition takes place only every four years, Melikyan said the YouTube prequel provides potential competitors with “something to keep their chops going” between events. The foundation plans to continue the competitions for the next three years, he said, sending several winners to the 2011 event. “It keeps them focused,” he said.

Melikyan added that YouTube access also provides an important bridge for potential classical music fans. “We have to keep this art form alive, and what better way than to play it at home?”

diane.haithman@latimes.com

May 8, 2008, Toledo, Ohio - Greg Kostraba, classical music director at WGTE-FM (91.3) can be seen on YouTube until May 15, competing in the Van Cliburn Amateur YouTube Competition. One of 42 performers selected for this contest, Kostraba, who also performs and leads a chamber music group locally, is playing Robert Muczynski’s “Desperate Measures,” a light-hearted yet challenging set of variations on a theme by Paganini. His performance is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJCban6asWg.

March 16, 2008 - FORT WORTH, Texas – The Van Cliburn Foundation will host its first Cliburn YouTube Contest this spring.

To enter, eligible amateur pianists should submit a five- to 10-minute performance video to be judged by online viewers. Winner of the Cliburn YouTube Contest will be entered in the next International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, to be held in summer 2011. The application fee will be waived.

Deadline to submit a video is April 30. The contest is open to any classical pianist who does not derive a significant portion of his or her income from performance, composition and/or piano instruction, and is at least 35 years old. The winner must meet all eligibility requirements.

Videos should be posted in the group contest for amateur classical pianists found on the foundation’s YouTube Channel. Sevan Melikyan, director of marketing for the foundation, said the contest was created “to inspire and motivate amateur pianists to practice and perfect their skills continually, until the main competition takes place in 2011.”

Beginning May 1, voters can go online and select the contestant of their choice. Voters will be required to register through the Cliburn Web site and will be sent a ballot via e-mail. Voting closes May 15.

For information, including rules and regulations and video clips from the amateur competition, visit www.cliburn.org.

Since 1999, the Van Cliburn Foundation has held its International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in the 1,200-seat Ed Landreth Hall on the campus of Texas Christian University Fort Worth.

Seventy-five pianists participate in the quadrennial three-round competition. Each pianist plays 12 minutes in the first round, 20 in the second, and 30 in the final round.