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The 2016 Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC), to be held this July and August, has announced its 35 final contestants, which include new graduate Shen Lu (AD ’16, Paik) and recent alum Tomer Gewirtzman (MM '15, Babayan). The CIPC will kick off its two-week-long competition with a performance from 2013 First Prize winner and alum Stanislav Khristenko (AD ’11, Babayan) who will perform solo works and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with CityMusic Cleveland.

 CIPC president and CEO Pierre van der Westhuizen along with a jury made up of 58³Ô¹ÏÍø faculty Kathryn Brown and Paul Schenly, Lei Weng from the University of Colorado and Caroline Oltmanns from Youngstown State University, expanded the number of contestants this year to 35, siting both the high level of competition and an increased number of applicants. "Based on what we're hearing, we're going to have a fantastic competition," Brown told Cleveland.com. 

Alum Zsolt Bognár (BM ’05, MM’07, Babyan) will provide commentary throughout the various rounds of the competition on the webcast available on CIPC’s . For the full list of contestants visit