In 2005, I had the pleasure of spending some time with Van Cliburn, who was a frequent guest of a good friend of mine in Miami. Although his background is classical, he’s very down to earth and can tell some great jokes. I had heard his name since I was a kid, and frankly, to my ear, it seemed everyone called him ‘Vancliburn’. I remember thinking it odd that he had a one word name like ‘Liberace’, but figured it was some ‘piano thing’. There is some sad news below.

The only classical pianist who has received a ticker-tape parade in New York City, Van Cliburn has announced through his publicist that he has been diagnosed with advanced bone cancer. Van passed away in 2013.

Raised in Texas and educated at Juilliard, Harvey Lavan “Van” Cliburn earned global fame at age 23 when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958, which occurred at the height of the Cold War.

Cliburn performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and his later recording of the latter was the first classical recording to sell 1 million copies and eventually went triple-platinum.

Cliburn eventually gave his name to the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1962, and despite retiring in 1978 he has performed for every American president since Harry Truman. Cliburn received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.

I have fond memories of an evening with him and he was not at all haughty or snobbish. To the contrary, he was telling me about the hail storm at his home in Texas a few days back, and the damage it did to his new car which was so sever, his insurance company called the car irreparable and was going to replace it with another new one.

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