“Tuesday at Bass Hall, Jon Nakamatsu will share a very crowded piano keyboard with two others, Haochen Zhang and Andre-Michel Schub. The three pianists, who will perform a six-hands piece from The Barber of Seville, are past gold medalists at the Cliburn International Piano Competition,” writes Tim Madigan in Sunday’s (4/5) Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas). Nakamatsu, Zhang, and Schub “will join four other Cliburn laureates to celebrate John Giordano, who retired last year after 40 years as the Fort Worth competition’s jury chairman…. Until his retirement in 2000, Giordano had also served as the longtime conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Those same skills, bringing cohesion to an often disparate ensemble, were put to use shepherding jurors over the years, said Jacques Marquis, the Cliburn’s president and CEO…. Giordano said he has remained in touch with many of the young pianists he’s helped evaluate over the years…. ‘It’s very touching … that these people would think I had that kind of an impact that they would come back and do something like this.’ For the next Cliburn, in 2017, he will be succeeded by Leonard Slatkin.” The tribute concert will be live-streamed tonight (April 7) at the Cliburn’s website.
Posted April 7, 2015
