Just Try!

This morning, I was messaging back and forth with my good friend, a pianist, in Ireland (using WhatsApp).  I met her at the Charlotte airport when we were both en route to the 2016 Cliburn Amateur Competition.  During the course of the competition, we became good friends and have met a few times since - at the Washington D.C. competition and again when we each played recitals at the Gasteig in Munich.

At all of these competitions and recitals, one thing we couldn't help noticing was the disproportionate number of women.  Women make up roughly 50% of the population.  Yet at the Amateur Cliburn, about 1/3 of the starting field was female.  By the semifinals (top 12), only 3 of us were women.  Then all 3 of us were eliminated for the finals (top 6).  In Washington, D.C., we fared better, with my friend and I both making the top 6.  She won a couple special awards and I won 2nd overall.  In Munich, there were 11 recitals.  She and I were the only women.

The "real" Cliburn began this past Thursday.  This is for pianists ages 18-30 who are shooting for concert careers.  A win at the Cliburn can indeed launch a superstar career.  It's the Olympics of piano competitions and an absolutely grueling test of nerves and endurance over 4 rounds spanning 2.5 weeks.  Each contestant prepares roughly 4 hours worth of memorized repertoire.

290 people applied and 30 were ultimately accepted.  9 were women.  So, again, roughly 1/3 of the field.  I watched live online last night as they announced the 20 quarterfinalists.  17 men.  3 women.  Of the 10 eliminated after the preliminary round, 6 were female.  

Now, let me set the record straight, just in case you think I am complaining or saying it's unfair.  I'm not.  I believe the best should advance and the jury (male and female members) know what they're doing.  However, I can't help noticing a pattern here... that piano competition is a very male-dominated field.  I am not sure why that is.  Is it due to our physical differences?  In general, women are not as big and we don't have as large a hand span.  It's harder for us to play big chords and with as big a sound.  Do the men generate more dynamic contrast and more excitement, and does that give them an edge?  I found myself feeling dismayed that the majority of these women had worked so hard to be eliminated early on.

I thought about this all today while I ran the third race in our local summer race series - the Memorial Day 10K.  

In sports, we compete separately due to the general physical differences between genders.  As I ran this out and back course, I was able to count the women ahead of me.  When the faster women started going by me after the turn-around, I counted them as they came at me.  I was 9th.

I was working really hard, holding roughly an 8-minute mile pace.  Many times, I felt like packing it in and slowing down, thinking, "What does it matter, really?  I'm never going to be the best.  Why am I doing this to myself?"  Then I thought of those women at the professional Cliburn.  I thought of the women who compete in the amateur ranks.  Looking at results of past competitions, we really have our work cut out for us.  However, IF WE DON'T AT LEAST TRY, we are defeated before we've even begun.

So I resolved to keep up the intensity, to keep trying to distract myself with pleasant thoughts and memories, to JUST KEEP TRYING HARD.

I stayed in 9th place until the end, and you know what else, the man on my heels for the last 2 miles never did catch me, either.

The local women in my 45-49 age group are quite fast, as a group.  Three of us were in the top 10.  My time (49:47, or an 8:02/mile pace) was good enough for 2nd place in my age group today.  I even won a door prize of a hanging basket of petunias.

I'm watching the quarterfinals of the Cliburn as I type this blog.  (An Italian guy just finished Rachmaninoff's Variations on a Theme of Chopin, Op. 22, to a standing ovation and whoops and hollers.)  Everyone in this competition is trying hard; hoping to change their life.  I'm sure those three women in the quarterfinals are not thinking about the fact that so few of them made it.  Perhaps the men have an edge, but if they do, I'm sure the women are instead focusing on controlling what they can control and doing what they can do.

We won't all be top prizewinners on a world stage, but that shouldn't matter.  We have to believe in ourselves and make every effort to be our best, giving everything we've got.