Does anyone else remember Van Cliburn, the Texas-born pianist who went to Moscow during the most frigid years of the Cold War and won a medal for playing Rachmaninoff? That was in 1958, when he was a mere whippersnapper of a young pianist.
History repeats itself.
Now Mr. Cliburn is the founder and namesake and guiding light of his own piano competition. Just the other day, a 20-year-old from Tokyo (Nobuyuki Tsukii) and a 19-year-old from China (Haochen Zhang) went to Texas and won a shared first prize in Mr. Cliburn's music concours.
It's the first time for Asians to win the gold medal in such a prestigious contest, and for the winner from Tokyo--Nobuyuki Tsujii--the joy was compounded because learning to play classic compositions had been so very hard.
He started when he was 2 years old, by listening and copying. Two hands, ten fingers, and eyes that cannot see. Mr. Tsujii has been blind from birth.
Blind musicians are not wholly unheard of, but performing classical music scores has an added complication: the music is created in cooperation with an orchestra. What do you do when you can't see the conductor?
Okinawa Looks Like This
Peaceful: a beautiful place for a walk
自己紹介
- Chura
- Born and raised in the USA (NJ), I’ve spent most of my adult life in Japan. One of my favorite places in Japan is Okinawa. To me, Okinawa is a land of stories and an island of music, magic and mystery. The music is shima-uta, songs sung to the rhythm of a three-stringed lute called a sanshin. The magic is in the colors of land, sea and sky. The mystery? Mystery begins where the line between legend and verifiable human memories begins to blur. I am a member of the Archaeological Institute of America, chapter chief of a sanshin study society, and a founding member of the Marine Culture Research Association of Okinawa.