Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Presents Master Class at CSU

Colorado State University will host a special master class by the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition joint gold medal winner, Nobuyuki Tsujii, on Tuesday, March 12, 3:30 p.m. in the Organ Recital Hall at the University Center for the Arts, located at 1400 Remington St. This event is free and open to the public.

Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii (No-boo-you-key Tsu-gee-ee), affectionately referred to as Nobu by his friends and fans, captured the hearts and imaginations of music lovers the world over with his gold medal-winning performances at the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009. The resulting audience fervor has taken on a momentum that Time Magazine has coined "Nobu Fever."

Acclaimed for his heartfelt and inspiring performances, Nobu is also noted for what the Chicago Tribune praised as "fearless technical assurance, accuracy, and musicality...suppleness of line and lyrical grace." Blind since birth, Nobu believes that there are no barriers in the field of music.

Performing a concert on March 13 at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Tsujii’s master class at Colorado State will be filmed by New York City’s Peter Rosen for a documentary about the life of the artists. The master class will conclude with an audience Q&A for Nobuyiki.

Peter Rosen has produced and directed over 100 full-length films and television programs which have been distributed world-wide and have won awards at all the major film festivals. He has worked directly with some of the most important figures in the arts such as Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, and Stephen Sondheim.

About Nobuyuki Tsujii

Blind since birth, Nobuyuki Tsujii was joint Gold Medal winner at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. An inspirational musician with a formidable technique and a natural gift for pianistic colour, he has earned international recognition in recent years for the excitement of his live performances. As a concerto soloist he has appeared with the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy, the BBC Philharmonic and Yutaka Sado and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and Thierry Fischer among others. Future engagements include his Carnegie Hall orchestral debut with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, his debut with the Seattle Symphony under Ludovic Morlot and a major Japanese tour with the BBC Philharmonic, Yutaka Sado conducting.

About the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition

Van Cliburn's sensational victory at the first Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958 heralded a new confidence in the quality of American music-making, as well as a new era in cultural relations between East and West. The quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, widely recognized as one of the world's most important, was organized by a group of music teachers and citizens from Fort Worth, Texas in 1962 to commemorate his historic achievement and is dedicated to the discovery of the world's finest pianists. The Cliburn will present the fourteenth edition May 24 -June 9, 2013, at Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall. cliburn.org.

The University Center for the Arts at Colorado State University provides an enriched venue in which the study and practice of Art, Dance, Music and Theatre are nurtured and sustained by building the skills and knowledge needed by future generations of arts professionals to become contributors to the essential vitality of our culture and society.