Pictures at a Competition

(The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs 2000)

I weeded out the pictures I took during the week in Fort Worth leaving about 300 so that they would fit on one CD. Below are thumbnails of these. They are organized by date and time. The name of the image starts with the letter "c" followed by a two digit day of the month (June 2000), followed by two digits of hour and two for minutes. When more than one picture was taken in the same minute, there is an additional letter after this. Anyway, you can use this to locate pictures by the time of the event or performance.

There are a disproportionate number with myself in them.. hey it's my camera! I tried to get at least one shot of each semi-finalist and finalist performing and taking a bow. Since I didn't use a flash for these, they are sometimes blurred because of motion. Sorry. I got a lot of other random candid shots, so please forgive me if you were in an awkward pose.

I have set up this web site so that you can click on the thumb nail pictures and receive a larger resolution version (usually between 100K and 200K bytes in size). The full resolution pictures are sometimes around 2 megabytes in size and perhaps only twice as sharp, so I didn't put those on my web site. I would not have space for all of them anyway. If you print them on a good photo printer, they will come out almost as good as film pictures. To get good prints, use glossy paper and a printer such as the HP 932C or other one in the 900 series or Epson Photo Stylus 700 or 750. Other printers may be suitable as well, but I only have experience with the ones I mentioned.

If you want the highest resolution version of any of the pictures, I can email it to you if you ask for it. Send email requests to Viktors Berstis

viktors@berstis.com

If there is enough interest, I may package these pictures together with articles and notes about the event as a CD. To this end, if you want to give me captions to put on any pictures, please send them. Thanks!

Here is a general list of event times that may help sort out these pictures:

June 4 18:14 - 19:53, Welcome party
June 4 19:06, Kenny and Sherry Fischer who hosted the superb welcome party
June 5, totally uninteresting, they all got weeded out
June 6 14:24 - 14:29, Landreth lobby
June 6 16:40 - 17:51, Hawley getting ready and duet concert
June 6 17:12, Ronald Coners, our fine piano technician
June 6 18:54, Mark Gordon in nearby hamburger grill frequented by many of us
June 6 20:59, Todd Holmberg, competitor coordinator
June 6 20:59 - 20:53, Tuesday evening intermissions
June 6 23:19 - 23:37, Long day ends with Programming Prokofiev Jam & Conversation
June 7 10:52 - 11:43, Wednesday morning backstage for piano tryout
June 7 13:04 - 13:27, Waits lounge
June 7 18:43 - 18:46. Competitor and Jury dinner at Joe Garcia's
June 7 20:14 - 20:36, Last of us waiting for our turn to play
June 7 22:27, Me waiting for the recording people to change tapes before
June 7 22:28, Asking the announcer, Steve Cumming, to read yellow sticky note to my parents: "Hi mom and dad. This is the perfect time to say thank you for making me practice even though I wanted to go outside."
June 7 22:37, My performance
June 7 22:43, Relieved afterward with superb behind-the-scenes staff
June 7 22:48 - 22:53, Family, relatives and friends
June 7 22:54, David Cornell, waiting for jury results
June 7 23:00, My parents 88 and 80 who drove from Kalamazoo to see me play, my cousin Ilze (lives nearby, thanks for hospitality!), and myself
June 7 23:18 - June 8 00:29, Receiving participation gifts and waiting for jury results
June 8 00:29, The semifinalists
June 8 09:46, Debra Saylor (who won all of our hearts with her playing), David Leehey, and myself in Waits lounge the next morning
June 8 11:04 - 13:48, Music and Medicine Symposium, and competitors getting first round comments from jury
June 8 15:02 - 15:48, At the piano marathon
June 8 19:56 - 22:32, At "Pepsico" auditorium after Phillippe Bianconi concert
June 9 13:05, Lunch down the road
June 9 15:00 - June 10 00:10, The semi-finals with intermissions
June 10 00:25 - 00:28, Van Cliburn gives speech and plays Happy Birthday on piano
June 10 00:30 - 00:46, Semi-finals results and awards
June 10 13:20 - 14:51, Just around before finals
June 10 15:11 - 19:15, The finals
June 10 19:35, The three "IBM" competitors
June 10 19:48 - 19:49, Waiting for results
June 10 20:20 - 20:21, Jury assembles on stage
June 10 20:23 - 20:55, Speeches and final awards
June 10 20:23, Steve Cumming, Our Announcer
June 10 20:25, Alann Bedford Sampson, Chairman of the Board
June 10 20:31, Richard Rodzinski, President of the Van Cliburn Foundation
June 10 20:32, Todd Holmberg, Production Manager and Competitor Coordinator
June 10 20:39, Van Cliburn
June 10 20:56, Kathie Cummins and Louise Canafax - part of the superb staff of volunteers that pampered us and put us all at ease
June 10 21:05, Alina Rubinstein, who's suggestion started this fantastic event
June 10 21:46 - June 11 00:09, Celebration Dinner! .. and what a celebration it was!
June 10 22:24, Tamas Ungar - Executive Director and faculty of the outstanding TCI/Cliburn Institute that many competitors attended
June 11 00:06, Van Cliburns stretch is about one inch longer than mine.. WOW!
June 11 09:29 - 11:23, Last look at the buildings and a typical practice room