Nobuyuki Tsujii - Gold Medalist, Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2009)

Recorded live at Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth, Texas on May 22 - June 7, 2009.
Nobuyuki Tsujii (辻井 伸行 Tsujii Nobuyuki) (also known as Nobu Tsujii) is a Japanese pianist and composer. He was born blind due to microphthalmia, and his exceptional musical talent has propelled him to become a world renowned artist. Tsujii performs extensively, with a large number of conductors and orchestras, and has received critical acclaims as well as notices for his unique techniques for learning music and performing with an orchestra while being unable to see.
Tsujii competed in the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and tied for the gold medal with Haochen Zhang. He was also awarded the Beverley Taylor Smith Award for the best performance of a new work. He played all twelve of Frédéric Chopin's Études (Op. 10) as part of his performance in the preliminaries. Tsuji was one of the competitors prominently featured in the Peter Rosen documentary film about the 2009 Van Cliburn competition, A Surprise in Texas, which was first broadcast on PBS TV in 2010.
In addition to being a pianist, Tsujii is a composer. At age 12, he performed his own composition "Street Corner of Vienna". He has since released numerous albums of his own compositions. He is also a film music composer, and the 2011 recipient of the Japan Film Critics Award for Film Music.
On November 10, 2011, Tsujii made his debut in the main hall (Isaac Stern Auditorium) at Carnegie Hall in New York, as part of the Keyboard Virtuosos II series. Tsujii debuted at the BBC Proms on July 16, 2013 with a performance with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Juanjo Mena.
Tsujii is featured in a 2013 English textbook for high schools in Japan. A 2014 film Touching the Sound, also by Peter Rosen, documents Tsujii's life from birth to his 2011 Carnegie Hall debut, including footage of his visit to the region in Japan that suffered the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.