Clayton Stephenson
2022 GILMORE YOUNG ARTIST Clayton Stephenson
A native of Brooklyn, NY, 2022 Gilmore Young Artist Clayton Stephenson’s love for music is immediately apparent in his joyous charisma onstage, expressive power, and natural ease at the instrument. In addition to being named a Gilmore Young Artist in 2022, he also became the first Black finalist at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
He is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics at Harvard and a master’s degree in piano performance at the New England Conservatory under Wha Kyung Byun.
Mr. Stephenson started piano lessons at age seven and was accepted into the Juilliard Outreach Music Advancement Program the next year. At the age of ten he advanced to Juilliard’s elite pre-college program with the help of his teacher, Beth Nam. At Juilliard he studied with Matti Raekallio, Hung-Kuang Chen and Ernest Barretta.
In 2014 he became a Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation; won prizes at the Cliburn Junior International Piano Competition in 2015, and in 2016 won prizes at the Cooper International Piano Competition and received From the Top’s Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award. In 2017, he was named a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts.
As a guest artist, he has appeared with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, Louisville Symphony, and Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra. Recent and upcoming highlights of Clayton’s burgeoning career include appearances with the Calgary Philharmonic, Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Fort Worth, Louisville, Lansing and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras; and recitals at the Phillips Collection Concert Series in Washington, DC, Foundation Louis Vuitton Auditorium in Paris, Bad Kissinger Sommer Festival and BeethovenFest in Germany, Colour of Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, The Gilmore International Piano Festival, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. He has been featured on NPR, WUOL, and WQXR, and appeared in the “Grammy Salute to Classical Music” Concert at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium.