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The world's musician Remembering Van Cliburn S VanCliburn.org Van Cliburn performs for a rapt audience in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory during the Tchaikovsky Competition in April 1958. ince 1886, there have been 204 ticker-tape parades in New York City. The segment of Broadway known as "Canyon of Heroes" has honored athletes, astronauts, explorers, Olympians, veterans, and a pope. But there has only ever been one such parade to honor a musician. That musician was Van Cliburn. It was 1958, and he had just conquered the Soviet Union. By winning the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, Cliburn briefly united America and Russia just six months after the launch of Sputnik started the space race. His masterful performances of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff 's Piano Concerto No. 3 were met with an eight-minute standing ovation. "Cliburn seemed to have a Russian musical soul," music critic Olin Chism wrote soon after Cliburn's death. "He played Russian music on Russian soil in a way that many Russians thought was theirs alone." His talent was unquestionable. One judge reportedly defined the performance by giving Cliburn the highest possible score while assigning all the other competitors zeros. But the victory was in doubt: An American winning an inaugural Soviet competition was, to say the least, a ticklish situation. The jury asked premier Nikita Khrushchev for approval before naming the winner and sparking an international sensation. But by then, Cliburn was used 14 PAN PIPESSPRING 2013 sai-national.org to accolades. Cliburn was born Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. on July 12, 1934, in Shreveport, LA. At age 3, he studied piano with his mother, Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn, herself later named an SAI Friend of the Arts. When he was 12, he won his first Texas competition and made his orchestral debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He went on to study at Julliard. From ages 18 to 23, he won all but one competition he entered. He was performing with orchestras across the nation, including the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, by age 20. At the age of 23, he left for Moscow and returned a phenomenon. Cliburn recorded Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 1 with Kiril Jondrashin, conductor of the Tchaikovsky Competition, and their album went platinum, the first classical recording to do so. Cliburn returned to the Soviet Union repeatedly for tours and performances until 1972. In 1974, he grew weary of constant touring and decided to retire from the road once his obligations were met. In 1978, he unpacked his suitcase. At the urging of President Ronald Reagan, Cliburn returned from retirement in 1987 to perform at a state visit by Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1989, Cliburn again performed in Moscow and Leningrad. He was initiated as a National Arts Associate by the Fort Worth (TX) Alumnae Chapter of SAI on April 4, 1991 in a ceremony led by SAI National President Elsie Sterrenberg. Cliborn's mother Rildia was also initiated as a Friend of the Arts. He was an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London and received more than 20 honorary doctorate degrees. He has provided scholarships at many schools, including Juilliard, the Cincinnati Conservatory, Texas Christian University, Louisiana State University, the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, and the St. Petersburg and Moscow conservatories. He performed for every American president since Harry Truman and for royalty and heads of state in Europe, Asia, and South America. He has received Kennedy Center Honors and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2003, President George W. Bush bestowed upon him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In a 2004 Kremlin ceremony, he received the Order of Friendship from President Vladimir Putin. President Barack Obama honored Cliburn with the National Medal of Arts in a ceremony at the White House in 2011. His 1987 White House recital had ended with a Russian ballad personally requested by Mrs. Gorbachev. At his funeral on March 3 in Fort Worth, a chorus of 300, made up of four local church choirs, performed that last song, having learned it phonetically the day before. The service also included a Rachmaninoff 's Second Symphony, performed by the Fort Worth Symphony and conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya (a fellow SAI National Arts Associate), and a Tchaikovsky hymn. More than a thousand people attended the

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