The YouTube Contest is open to any classical pianist who does not derive a significant portion of his/her income from performance, composition, and/or piano instruction and is at least thirty-five years old. The winner may not have won any previous Cliburn competitions.
"He had no particular aptitude for trade, and that by which he lived (he had entered upon it thirty years ago rather by accident than choice) was thoroughly distasteful to him. As a dealer in pianofortes, he came into contact with a class of people who inspired him with a savage contempt, and of late years his business had suffered considerably from the competition of tradesmen who knew nothing of such conflicts between sentiment and interest. A majority of his customers obtained their pianos on the "hire-purchase system," and oftener than not, they were persons of very small or very precarious income, who, rabid in the pursuit of gentility signed agreements they had little chance of fulfilling; when in pecuniary straits, they either raised money upon the instruments, or allowed them to fall into the hands of distraining creditors. Inquiry into the cirumstances of a would-be customer sometimes had ludicrous results; a newly-married couple, for instance, would be found tenanting two top-floor rooms, the furnishing whereof seemd to them imcomplete without the piano of which their friends and relatives boasted. Not a few professional swindlers came to the office; confederate rogues, vouching for each other's respectability, got possession of pianos merely to pawn or sell them, having paid no more than the first month's charge. It was Mr. Lord's experience that year by year the recklessness of the vulgar became more glaring, and deliberate fraud more artful."
On Sunday, classical music lovers and Deadheads will unite when conductor Marin Alsop leads the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in the fourth live performance of Dead Symphony no. 6, the cornerstone of a concert commemorating the 14th anniversary of Garcia's death. The 12-movement work, which features improvisation and in-jokes such as a reference to the Dead's favorite warm-up song, the Italian ditty "Funiculì, Funiculà," will be performed alongside Australian composer Matthew Hindson's techno music-inspired Rave-Elation (Schindowski Mix). The concert will be followed by a discussion with Johnson, longtime Dead publicist and biographer Dennis McNally and David Gans, host of the nationally syndicated "Grateful Dead Hour" radio show
"The top three competitors will also be awarded full four-year scholarships to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, pending admission, valued at more than $100,000 each. In addition to prize money, the first-prize winner will receive concert engagements with orchestras in Beijing and Shanghai, China."
