Cliburn Competition 2025: Backstage access
Are YOU ready?
The excitement kicks off Wednesday, May 21—and I’ll be right there with you.
Throughout the competition, I’ll serve as your backstage correspondent for the Cliburn’s official webcasts and digital content. You’ll find me in the wings, greeting each pianist as they step offstage and capturing those first reactions—raw, emotional, illuminating. I’ll dive into performance surprises, unpack artistic decisions, and share the most fascinating insights, all while curating highlight reels, vignettes, and bite‑size educational clips.
In short: if you want real, behind‑the‑scenes access to the Cliburn, I’ve got you covered.
Keep an eye on Liz who will be anchoring the main desk alongside Buddy Bray. I’ll join them during jury voting to unpack the drama, discuss repertoire trends, and explore what lies ahead for the competition’s standout artists.
Whether you’re charting your own keyboard journey, following emerging talents, or simply savoring the highest levels of pianistic artistry, the truly incredible Cliburn webcast team will deliver an immersive, front‑row seat.
Backstage Tip: Don’t wait for the finals! Some of the competition’s finest moments emerge in the competition’s preliminary round, when the competitors are freshest and at their most prepared.
Mozart’s Lost Fantasy
In 2024, after immersing myself in Mozart’s completed works for piano, I turned to the hundred or so incomplete sketches he left behind. One fourteen-bar fragment in F minor (K. Anh. 32) stopped me cold: it erupts in an agitated Baroque-inspired improvisation, only to dissolve into a dreamscape of repeating notes, sour harmonies, and wistful filigree that feels decades ahead of its time, foreshadowing the Romantic piano writing of Chopin.
And then the music simply... stops.
Composed in 1789, crushed by debt, beset by illness, and facing his own mortality, Mozart’s sketch fizzles out mid-stream—its last bars swallowed by the chaos of life. No edition offers a performable realization, yet those halted measures continued to haunt me.
Rather than attempt a full completion, I became a jeweler for this musical gemstone, interweaving it with two vocal laments by Mozart. There’s Barbarina’s anguished “I’ve lost it” from The Marriage of Figaro, alongside music from Das Lied der Trennung with the lyrics, “Forgetting robs in hours what love took years to give.”
Only five percent of the Fantasy’s completion is by me; the rest is pure, passionate, transcendent Mozart. With a hint of fairy dust to bind the music, I’ve fashioned a self-portrait of Mozart at the close of his life—Mozart in conversation with himself, contemplating the universal fear that time will erase what we hold dear.
Enjoy a performance of my completion below, and find more info and the score here.
Bach: Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben
The Jussen brothers recorded a beautiful rendition of my arrangement of “Out of love my savior is willing to die” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.
From the Top show #460 + interview
What fun! I co-hosted NPR's "From the Top" this week alongside the inimitable Peter Dugan. Listen for the Alexis-Hansen Piano Duo’s take on my Sabre Dance arrangement, as well as their hilarious account of the choreographic pitfalls they faced while performing the piece.
And a big congrats to “From the Top” on celebrating their 25th anniversary! I first appeared on the show exactly 25 years ago, and the experience was nothing short of transformational. As an 18-year-old, I hadn’t considered the skills I’d need to succeed as a professional musician beyond practicing. The “From the Top” staff taught me how to be an excellent communicator about music and helped me define my musical purpose.
Please consider supporting their mission today. Here are just a few reasons:
From the Top changed my life. I know it will change future kids’ lives, expose them to a wider world, ignite their passions, and help define their purpose.
From the Top adds beauty and goodness to the world; we can never have enough of both.
Through music, we can rise above our differences to find common ground.
Interview here: Catching Up with Alum Greg Anderson
Mozart Rondo + listening guide
How do you listen to music? Do you let it wash over you? Feel it viscerally? Contemplate its inner workings?
I’m endlessly fascinated by the listening experience (see: Music Listening: an Incomplete Manifesto), and for years I’ve dreamed of creating listening guides synched to music.
This is my first attempt at such—a personal tour through Mozart’s Rondo in A minor, K. 511.
Mozart’s music tends to be “absolute music.” It’s music for music’s sake and not intended to represent or illustrate something else. This quality makes it tricky to describe, as it lacks the clear narrative entry points found in program music like Debussy’s Clair de lune. And it sometimes leads to post-performance questions like, “I don’t get it... what’s it about?”
Yet there’s so much to observe, describe, and adore in Mozart’s work, from his unsurpassed craft to his profound understanding of human emotions, and this is my attempt to align my personal insights with clear, audible examples in the music.
Of course, listening is a highly personal journey, so I’ve embedded the guide in the video’s closed captions. Toggle them on and off as you like.
Please enjoy this love letter to Mozart, leave your thoughts in the video’s comments, and stay tuned for more Mozart projects to come!
Cliburn Agency
I’ve joined The Cliburn's exciting new venture, the Cliburn Agency, as a both a solo and duo pianist.
For over a decade, Liz and I have enjoyed a richly rewarding partnership with The Cliburn, appearing on their concert series and hosting their webcasts in 2015, 2017, and 2022. Our missions have been unified from the start, which has made it extra exciting to watch their organization grow and their mission succeed. We’ve seen the advent of their webcasts and their many new initiatives, including the Cliburn Junior competition, Cliburn Sessions (classical piano in bars), Cliburn in the Classroom, and Cliburn Kids, not to mention the many developments and commissions associated with the main competition itself.
And now, there’s the Cliburn Agency. Earlier this year when they invited me to join the roster as a soloist, I couldn’t have been more honored and thrilled. Their directive was simple: do what I want. That was it. I’ve spent much of the year asking myself what that might be—what do I most want to do with my love for music? The answers haven’t come easily, but it’s easily been one of the most rewarding journeys of my lifetime, and I’m thankful to The Cliburn for making it possible. I’m eager to share my discoveries, new music, and experiments over the next year and beyond!
I—and Liz and I—look forward to co-creating a powerful impact on the world of music with the Cliburn team and the other inspiring artists on the roster!
Be sure to follow my new solo social media channels on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
(And of course, don’t miss the duo’s channels, too: YouTube, Instagram, Facebook.)
Amy Beach's "Dreaming" + listening guide
I’ve been obsessed with Amy Beach’s “Dreaming” (1892) for years. I first heard the piece in 2003 while listening to Alan Feinberg’s memorable album, “The American Romantic,” on a CD player in the Juilliard library (because that’s how we listened to music in 2003…). I immediately found myself intoxicated by the drifting harmonies amidst the melodic meanderings, and I’ve never forgotten the feeling.
To enhance your listening experience, I created three one-minute listening guides that articulate some of what goes through my head at the piano:
Eight new scores available for sale
I’m pleased to release several new scores, including my first two works for 8 hands at 2 pianos. I look forward to hearing what you do with these!
Solo piano:
Mozart’s sublime “Ave verum corpus,” arranged for solo piano.
One piano, four hands:
Mozart’s “Ave verum corpus.” This beautiful (and less challenging) arrangement for piano duet is dedicated to Liz’s daughter.
Bach/Gounod “Ave Maria.” The arrangement is inspired by stained glass windows and has been one of the most requested scores at recent Anderson & Roe performances.
Two pianos, four hands:
Capriccio on Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5. Listen to a live performance of the virtuoso work at the link.
Nocturne on Neptune, inspired by Gustav Holst’s “Neptune” and the astrological writings that influenced it.
Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag with a second piano overlay. Party time.
Two pianos, eight hands:
Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise” arranged for 4 pianists on 2 pianos. The arrangement was commissioned by the Geneva Tuesday Quartette for their 100th anniversary(!) and is based on my version for piano duet.
Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance Op. 42, No. 5 (in its original form for piano duet) with an overlay for a second piano duet. A wild, fun, and virtuosic showpiece!
Aspen Music Festival commission + conducting debut
Last year the Aspen Music Festival commissioned me to compose something a little… unusual: a piece for 8 pianos and 32 hands (yes, that’s 16 pianists in total).
I initially balked at the idea. Having composed several works for multiple pianos, I was already well aware of the inherent difficulties. A piano’s sharp, percussive attack leaves little room for error in synchronization. Achieving precision with two pianists can be difficult enough; sixteen pianists seemed destined for chaos. Moreover, contrary to intuition, when multiple pianos strike the same note simultaneously, the sound doesn’t increase in volume; the sound waves seem to clash in mid-air, canceling each other out in some sonic tug-of-war. Then there were the duet logistics: writing for two pianists at one piano can be a puzzle of awkward hand collisions, yet the solution can’t always be to spread out the four hands over the full range of the piano—the result would be a grating steamroller of sound. Writing for 16 pianists across 8 pianos exponentially compounded these concerns.
But beyond the technical challenges, the most important question I kept asking myself was: How do I musically justify all these pianos and pianists? What’s the reason for 16 people on stage?
I spent five months working on the score, day and night, even asking for a one-month extension. The process was more demanding yet more creatively fulfilling than I anticipated.
Titled Star & Stripes: Fireworks for 8 Pianos, 32 Hands, the 10-minute work is based on John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars & Stripes Forever March.” Conceived on a grand scale, much of the piece features unique effects made possible by the mass of pianos. The 16 parts weave together overlapping layers of tremolos, scales, and arpeggios that blend into sonic impressions of clouds, fireworks, and rainbows—like painting with sound.
I conducted several of my pianistic idols and mentors in the world premiere (and my conducting debut) at the Aspen Music Festival, including Veda Kaplinsky, Hung-Kuan Chen, Arie Vardi, and Anton Nel.
The score is available here, and enjoy excerpts from our dress rehearsal over on my Instagram account.