by Mike Telin
If you ask a musician what new skill they learned during the past eighteen months, more often than not, the answer is video editing. And, in a relatively short amount of time, many became quite good at it.
“Everyone we knew learned how to video-edit,” Marissa Glynias Moore, executive director at Piano Cleveland, said via Zoom. “So we thought, what would be a cool way for us to tap into that creativity?”
On Wednesday, October 27 at 7:00 pm, Piano Cleveland will debut PianoFlicks, a new video contest showcasing pianists as they creatively re-imagine how classical music is presented and enjoyed by audiences. Throughout the broadcast — which will air on the Piano Cleveland website — viewers will have the opportunity to cast their vote for the Audience Prize. They can also cast their votes over the course of the next week — details below. All participants will receive prize money for their participation in the contest.
“Everything we do is about making classical music more accessible, not only for the audience, but for young pianists as well — making yourself and what you do accessible is an important part of being an artist in today’s world,” Moore said.
After a three-day break, Competition first-round performances will continue on Thursday, July 15 at 7:00 pm. Audiences can also experience that evening’s session by attending the Watch Party at the Beachwood Community Center. Pack a picnic and bring your chairs to watch performances under the stars and on the big screen. Click 
Many pianists win prizes in international piano competitions but few return to the scenes of their triumphs to run them.
Piano Cleveland has announced that after a year-long postponement due to the challenges presented by the pandemic, the organization’s signature event — the Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC) — will take place from July 8 through August 11, 2021. (Above: Nikita Mndoyants, 2016 first place winner, with Bramwell Tovey.)
With the recent spread of COVID-19, the opportunity to attend live classical music performances has come to a complete halt and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. Many organizations and individual artists are seeking to fill that void through online streaming.
Classical music concerts in Cleveland usually thin out in July as festivals outside the city get under way, most notably The Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom season. So it is a welcome turn of events to see a new international summer festival supported by University Circle institutions arrive for two weeks in mid-July. I attended the first weekend of Music in the Circle concerts that brought musicians from around the world to the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, July 11 and to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Sunday, July 14.
For 36 seasons, 