Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
Clayton Stephenson
From the files of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” comes this tale from Clayton Stephenson, a pianist in the 16th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
The school hosting a piano summer camp he was attending as a child was renovating. Out with the old were two standup pianos, thrown to the side, their destination the same as a trashed, empty coffeehouse grande. But for a child prodigy whose family didn’t have the means to bring a piano into the home, that standup piano was something akin to striking oil at Spindletop.
“We didn’t even have a piano in our home,” says Stephenson, who made use of a synthesizer at the house. “We took one. That became my practice piano for six years.”
Fort Worth is hosting 30 of the most breathtaking talent in the world of pianists.
Clayton Stephenson, a son of Brooklyn, is one of them, dazzling an audience in a 40-minute preliminary-round recital at TCU’s Van Cliburn Concert Hall on Friday morning.
In the preliminaries, each pianist performs a repertoire that consists of works chosen by the pianist, including the commissioned work of 4 to 6 minutes in length, composed by Stephen Hough.
For the judges he opened with Joseph Haydn’s Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:37, followed by Hough’s Fanfare Toccata, and closing with transcriptions, Stravinsky-Agosti suite from The Firebird and Strauss-Godowsky Symphonic Metamorphosis on Die Fledermaus.
“I love the audience. The audience is great here,” Stephenson says. “I didn’t understand what Jacques [Marquis, Cliburn CEO] was talking about when he was telling us about how homey the audience in Fort Worth is. Walking on the state, I could feel the love, and that they’re always listening. They’re very supportive.”
Stephenson, 23, hopes to be one of 18 who advance to the quarterfinals, beginning Sunday. Twelve will advance to the semifinals, and a select six will move on to the finals at Bass Hall.
In a conversation after his performance Friday, Stephenson radiated joy the way a cologne bottle sprays eau de cologne.
In addition to his demonstrated ability as a performing artist, Stephenson is also an academic. He’s in the dual degree program at Harvard and the New England Conservatory. At Harvard, he will soon begin his senior studies as a economics major. At the New England Conservatory, he is working on a master’s in piano performing under Wha Kyung Byun.
His studies in economic theory keep him grounded and well-rounded, he says. “I think one of the things with music, and art in general, is you can get so wrapped up in the piece you’re playing, you lose touch with how the world works. Economics brings me back to reality.”
He came to Fort Worth already an accomplished pianist. Actually, this is a return to Fort Worth. Stephenson, a won a jury discretionary award at the 2015 Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition and Festival.
There’s much more, of course. He has been recognized as a 2021 Gilmore Young Artist; U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts in 2017; Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award winner; Gheens Young Artist, and Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation.
Stephenson in 2022 is a field of the most bountiful, blossoming bluebonnets.
It all started rather late and quite on accident when his mother, looking for something for her rowdy, precocious 7-year-old to do, sent him to what he calls the “basement of a music school.”
There, he was sat upon a piano bench.
By the age of 8, the very next year, he was part of the Julliard Music Advancement Program, an outreach program for underprivileged children.
He is grateful for the opportunities public outreach programs gave him. He would not be on one of the world’s most preeminent classical music stages without them.
“One of the things I loved to do was sit and watch the student recitals of the Julliard Pre-College students. Full hourlong recitals. It really inspired me.”
He didn’t make it to the Julliard Pre-College program on his first try, but he did on his second, at 10 years old. Few, if any at all, had advanced out of the Music Advancement Program to the Julliard Pre-College. Since 2010, only 61 have made it there, according to the New York Times.
“My teacher at the time, Beth Nam, was so supportive,” Stephenson says. “Tons of extra lessons without charge. I didn’t have good technique growing up, but I loved the music.”
The Morningside Music Bridge followed, a summer camp in Canada that would have been prohibitive for a family of his economic standing, he says, had it not been free. He was later selected a young scholar of the Lang Lang Foundation, headed by Chinese pianist Lang Lang, who sparked controversy over a song he played at a 2011 state dinner at the White House.
“I know he gets a lot of flak for his piano playing,” Stephenson says of Lang, “but he is really caring of his students. He doesn’t sugarcoat anything if he thinks there’s something you can improve. Even if it can be hurtful, he’s going to say it. He wants us to succeed.”
With Lang, Stephenson performed at Carnegie Hall and the United Nations Assembly Hall. “Those things really gave me confidence and inspired me to play even more and improve myself.”
