Clayton Stephenson
The 2022 Cliburn finalist has been awarded a 2024 Avery Fisher career grant
The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has announced that 2022 Cliburn finalist Clayton Stephenson has received a 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant. This provides professional assistance and recognition, including a US$ 25,000 award and official performance broadcasting, to selected talented musicians. Deborah Borda, Avery Fisher Artist Program Chair and Nancy Fisher, daughter of the late Avery and Janet Fisher, announced the five 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipients recently on WQXR.
The 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipients, from left to right: Balourdet Quartet, Njioma Chinyere Grevious, Clayton Stephenson, Julian Rhee and Sandbox Percussion
American pianist Clayton Stephenson's love for music is immediately apparent in his joyous charisma onstage, expressive power, and natural ease at the instrument. The New York native credited the generous support of community programmes with providing him pivotal musical inspiration and resources along the way.
Clayton Stephenson
A recent Harvard-NEC dual degree program graduate, with a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard and a master's degree in piano performance from NEC under Wha Kyung Byun, Stephenson's accolades have been bountiful: in addition to being the first black finalist at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022, he was named 2022 Gilmore Young Artist, 2017 US Presidential Scholar in the Arts and Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. Stephenson attended The Juilliard School's Music Advancement Program for under-represented students, and advanced to Juilliard's elite Pre-College at age ten, where he studied with Matti Raekallio, Hung-Kuang Chen and Ernest Barretta.
Stephenson practiced on a synthesizer at home until he found an old upright piano on the street that an elementary school had thrown away; that would become his practice piano for the next six years, until the Lang Lang Foundation donated a new piano to him when he was sixteen. His numerous accomplishments have led to a blossoming career. Recent and forthcoming highlights include concertos with the Houston and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras, the Vegas Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, festival appearances at Grand Teton and Tippet Rise, recitals at venues including Foundation Louis Vuitton and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and collaborations with violinists Nikki and Timothy Chooi in Europe, Canada and the United States. Stephenson has also been featured on NPR, WUOL, Your Classical Performance Today, WQXR and BBC 3.
Further information about Clayton Stephenson: claytonstephenson.com
Further information about the Avery Fisher Artist Program: lincolncenter.org/series/avery-fisher-artist-program
Further information about the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition: cliburn.org
Posted 22 March 2024 by Keith Bramich
