How a Sunnyvale Kid Became Classical Music’s Biggest Comeback Story

One of the reasons why the passion for doing this doesn't end, there's something about being a part of creating this sound that is not just about the technical realization of the material or the understanding of the score and you feel like this is way beyond what we are, you know, that we're kind of the vessels through which this is being imparted, but that we can't, I can't really explain how it's affecting us, how it was created and how, you know, how it might affect other people. I almost feel like it has to just occupy a different space What would make a high school German teacher risk everything and end up shocking the classical music world? Our guest today is John Nakamatsu, a pianist, artist and the gold medal winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, one of the most prestigious stages in classical music. He went from a quiet classroom in Sunnyvale to performing Rachmaninoff and Gershwin for audiences around the world. Today we'll hear how he made this leap, what it felt like to have his life turned upside down overnight and what he's learned about music, excellence and staying true to oneself. This is Bay Area Innovators and I'm your host, Steve Esposito. John, welcome to our program. Thank you. Well, glad to have you here. So you grew up in Sunnyvale and then you went to Stanford for your studies and then I think your life really took kind of like out of the movie story that happened next. You ended up winning the Van Cliburn Competition. It completely changed your life. Please tell us a little bit how that whole thing happened, how you went there and how the event went and how it changed your life. Well, you know, the story really started, you know, back in Sunnyvale where I met my first piano teacher and in sort of a strange set of circumstances, you know, my first piano teacher who taught me my first scales actually was the person who then accompanied me to the Van Cliburn Competition some 20 years later and that's usually not the case. Usually your first piano teacher is not the person who's going to prepare you for a big career or even collegiate work in music. So I was just very, very fortunate and she really became a sort of conservatory for me outside of the public schools where I went and So either she was very good to begin with or she got better as you went. I think she had it, she kind of had it all in some ways, you know, was the ability to teach a young child but also again to know what a young precocious musician needs and that's again not usually the same person. Because of that, when I went to Stanford, I ended up majoring in something other than music. I didn't take degrees in music and so I have degrees in literature and language and German studies was my field and partly and mainly because so much of the core repertoire I played as a pianist was from Central Europe and I really wanted to understand so much of the culture and the context for the works that I was playing at the time, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Mozart. And that's kind of my academic life but at the same time I was always trying to compete because I knew that music was my dream and I wanted to spend my life pursuing music and studying it, playing it and competitions, piano competitions were a gateway for young people to establish a sort of presence on the stage and potentially make a career. So I started competing when I was very young and then the competitions just got bigger and more international by the time I was in my early 20s. The Clyburn for me in 1997 was really sort of a last chance because competitions have age limits of about 30 and at the time I was 28 and I had entered four years before and I was rejected at the very first level so I never really even made it to the competition four years before. But four years later as the competition happens quadrennially I decided well I'll give it one more shot because you know a year I think in the development of a 20 something year old musician is a significant period of time. So I applied again in 97 and somehow I got in and that alone was just so exciting for me you know just to I had grown up seeing all of these PBS documentaries of the competition every time and just thought it was such an incredible thing and now I was going to be a contestant in one of these events. So what were your thoughts going in? Were you thinking I have a chance to win this, I can do it or you're thinking well I'm kind of glad to be here and whatever happens happens? Well it's a little bit of everything. I mean you go in as a musician knowing that well the purpose here is to do well and to hopefully have something happen and to know that potentially you have a chance to if not to win to get a prize or to progress to the point where somebody's interested in you. But you know I spent my life especially in my 20s going to competitions and mostly losing and mostly being rejected and you learn very quickly that there isn't any guarantee no matter what your situation is and it doesn't always depend on how you play it also depends on circumstances of the arts you know. Arts are subjective and so it's very hard to quantify any type of of win or loss and that's a tough thing for especially a young performer to really internalize and understand and survive because you know like acting, like dance, the rejections are very very frequent and they're tough but I think if you have the resilience to grow through them and to not give up then you actually do have you know the smallest chance of potentially doing this. Now the competition happens every four years which is kind of like the Olympics. That's right. But you're right it's so different because in sports you swim you have a time right so it's so easy to differentiate like who's faster right or even tennis but music you know it's it's so much up to the judge right in so many ways. That's right I mean there are very we might think we have very concrete ideas about what we're looking for but in the end it's do I want to hear this person again and that's how how people make the decisions largely at least that's how I do it when I'm you know on the other side of the of the table but So you met Van Cliburn twice at least up to that point when you were eight years old. That's right. And then you met him again he gave you the award what was that like? Well so Van Cliburn's recital actually in Cupertino at the Flint Center back then was my very first experience at a professional piano recital hearing somebody of that caliber and you know at the time he was heavily into touring and all of his concerts were sold out and he was really a star in the way that um it doesn't really exist anymore um you know Van Cliburn was on the Johnny Carson show Van Cliburn was on game shows Van Cliburn was playing at Carnegie Hall every season you know so there there were so there was so much hype around his his fame that he really was a star in that sense and for me to to have the experience as a young child of of hearing a recital and being so inspired the story was that I my teacher and my mother took me backstage to meet him and you know there's this huge line of course and we waited and waited and waited and finally we get to him and you know instead of brushing off this little kid and just saying well you know whatever he signed not only signed my record because at the time we had LP right um he knelt down and talked to me and he just wanted to know who I was and why I was there and you know if I enjoyed the concert and um and you know I vowed never to wash my hand ever again because and and he was so kind and and I think that the full circle event for me was then some 20 years later meeting him at the competition where he had no idea who I was and then telling him afterwards you know you made a huge difference and impact in my life just by three minutes you know how can somebody do that in such a positive way but that that's who he was and um and that probably influenced how I tend to run my own career today you know just those brief moments now you won the competition you you come back home and then you quit your job right that's right yeah I had uh you know because I was a language major you know that's not gonna pay the bills either so I I looked for a job right after school and I I was I had an internship in graduate school uh at Stanford and so I was teaching high school German uh at Saint Francis High School in Mountain View so that was my that was my day job and it was like having a full-time profession and then trying to do another full-time profession on the side and so yeah I didn't do much else but after the the Clyburn medal life changed instantly it was I never went back winning the gold medal turned John into an overnight sensation but what happens when fame arrives all at once stick around to find out so tell us a bit about how it changed how did you handle the the fame or the the change how did you how did you deal with that the change was instantaneous I mean it's it's one of those things where you know you literally go from a situation of anonymity yeah to suddenly being vaulted into this career that you know you've only really dreamed of and so even though we've prepared for this eventuality the mechanics of actually doing it and then you know being thrust on all these stages after not sleeping and not practicing and then being asked to do a thousand things where you interviews travel you know you can only prepare so much and then suddenly you have you have to figure it all out and and I think that's why not everybody who has that opportunity ends up with a career at the end because it's overwhelming but I think it helped that I was slightly older I think my perspectives were different I was so shocked to actually get into the finals of the competition and then to win that you know it that's that was what I wanted you know that's and it's not what everybody wants but I was I was ready and I thought this is this is my one chance to do this and if it all ends tomorrow well at least I had my shot but and so I kind of went into it with that sense of of not putting everything about myself just into this one moment you know my whole self-worth wasn't really just tied up into the to the career even though it was completely consuming I mean the the whole idea of suddenly being thrust into the public and not being able to go out without people talking to you is a strange thing but sometimes fame acts differently different artists especially artists are not able to handle it very well how how would you say you dealt with that were you able to control it in a way that works towards your advantage instead of being destructive right because that happens I think in the moment especially right after you know when there's so much media attention and and back then you know there were papers in every city and every little town had reviews of concerts and your picture would be everywhere so there were far more in some ways local recognition of a presence you know when I came to a town I would be stopped you know at the gas station or or somebody would say something just because they saw my picture even if they weren't necessarily music fans and that's it's that's different today but I also have to say the general classical music public is not like the rock star public or the movie stuff like I don't have to be afraid for my life or you know have have a set of bodyguards walking around it's just it's not like that it's a very small segment but more reserved somewhat sometimes more rabid though but it's just kind of enough to be be pleasant and then okay with sneaking back into your anonymous self but but it does happen you know quite regularly that somebody will come up to me and say something and usually it's it's it's very nice it's very it's very sweet and but but it's tough and I think if you let that be it become a distraction and just that whole idea of you know having that kind of define you I think that's dangerous and that's something that especially a young person really needs to think about because you know you really are here to focus on on your art and your work and yes and who you are outside of that but not I think to be vested in that fame aspect that's that's really not an important part in this next part John talks about his most unforgettable moments on stage as well as his most recent participation at the Van Cliburn competition in Texas this time as a judge now touring the world you know for an artist is probably a dream right for every artist tell us about your about some of your most memorable tours that you had along the years well something that would say okay this is the one that I really love the most or hated the most there's there have been so many incredible experiences I mean part of the positive experiences anywhere has just been the people I've met you know the people I've played for my colleagues that I worked with you know those things have been just again things I dreamt of but never thought would actually happen and the way that things happened you know the the positive experiences that I had just as a musician or a person have been so numerous that I can't even think of one there have been some tours that have been really really fun for for different reasons like I used to tour very regularly with the wind quintet from the Berlin Philharmonic and once we did a three-week tour you know with about 17 concerts in 21 days and one of the stops was in Alaska and we got to go dog sledding and see the northern lights and do all these fun things between concerts between concerts sometimes right before the concert which I don't understand either but and so many firsts you know the first time I went to China and then stood on the Great Wall and the first time I went to Eastern Europe or the first time I went to South America you know those those were really eye-opening and incredible experiences and and I think in some ways because you realize that though the customs of the people in the concert halls may be different and the languages that we speak are completely not comprehensible to each other but that people are the same everywhere you go you know they want to be uplifted they listen to music for the same reasons I do they they react in the same way you know even though one audience may be very very polite and quiet and the other may be completely out of their seats it's what we do what we're what we go for in the hall I think is the same and that was really eye-opening for me you just got back from the Van Cliburn competition this year yes where was it and tell us a bit about that the competition is always in Texas Van Cliburn lived in Fort Worth for the last part of his life and the Van Cliburn Foundation was founded there and is still there this time I was actually on the jury which was the first for me okay and it was an incredible three plus weeks of music lots of music to listen to three weeks the competition yeah it's three weeks it's done in four rounds once you get there it's it's done in four rounds and there are eliminations after each round and it's a lot of hours of listening to contestants perform solo repertoire then repertoire with orchestra and you know it shows you a lot about who they are in in their journey even through those three weeks and and that's you know holding up or not well tell us a bit maybe you can reveal all of it but tell us a little bit what is the judge as a judge what are you looking for and how do you differentiate between the best artists that are or different songs even or even yes yeah well that's one of the the hardest questions to answer because you know in the arts things are an opinion you know things are a matter of taste and and though we base it on our knowledge of the piano pianists the music the the composers the the history that you know all of that kind of things which are somewhat concrete facts that we know of how people realize notes off a page and transform that into sound it's very different I mean we're all we can all play the same piece and yet every person is going to read the music slightly differently even if we're following all of the directives of the composer it will always sound different and we will have very different opinions as to which we figure is more either correct or more appreciated or whatever your adjective is I don't know what other judges look for and I'm always surprised by sometimes the results of you know who gets in and who doesn't but what I look for on a very basic level is someone that I want to hear again and it can be for many many different reasons but you know in short it's do they understand the music beyond just how to play it you know I mean many people can play the notes and many people can play incredibly well you know you hear young people playing pieces that once only 20 or 30 year olds could play and you wonder how how can they get that type of facility but you know the population in the arts evolves as a whole we we we kind of help younger generations grow into something that we as older people couldn't couldn't do but that doesn't necessarily mean that we'd want to hear it again there's something more something deeper in some people than in others and maybe it's a matter of being more developed and that you're hearing these people at the right time and so you know beyond simply playing all the right notes or being able to to complete the the performance you know you're looking for somebody who also then has the potential of being in the career for a long for the long term you know are they going to have a public appeal do they have a kind of personality on the stage or is there something in their music that will appeal to people who are looking for a deeper experience and those are kinds of questions that continually run through my mind in in addition to do they know what they're doing up there you know is it coming off the stage or are they basically just playing for themselves there's there's so many components well I gotta ask you this did you have a performance or a competition that went wrong and how did it go wrong and what how did you come out of it or what was the what was the result how were you able to to cope with it well I have I have performances that go wrong all the time you just keep going I mean that's the one thing about live performances that you know especially if you're working with other people like an orchestra I mean they you are you start and you cannot stop and if you stop it grinds to a halt and then you have to figure that out but that you know luckily that doesn't always happen but um just keep going you just keep going but all kinds of things have happened you know funny things not so funny things you know I was once as a young person in a competition at the Leeds competition in in in England where uh where somebody had a heart attack in the hall and my performance had to be stopped um and this process of and it started actually with fire alarms going off so my performance was stopped about four times and uh so you know talking about resilience to start over well there was no choice you just have to keep restarting and doing it again and again again I didn't get very far in that competition but you know that was also a learning experience because the same thing happened later a fire alarm went off actually once at Villa Montalvo here in Saratoga and a fire alarm went off in other halls too and I've had people have medical attention during concerts so you know that's the whole thing is it's a live living experience and people live as they do and so we we just have to go on. What truly separates a good pianist from a great one John opens up about the deeper side of music the spiritual connection he feels when performing and why music matters so deeply to him this is the heart of our interview stay tuned so it's been said that the sound of the piano can reach directly into someone's soul what do you find most rewarding when you play yourself or when you listen for that matter but probably more when you play what is the most rewarding element that you can think of if it's a performance I think it's when you really feel that there's kind of this two-way communication between the audience and the stage that doesn't always happen I mean sometimes it can be going well but there are really really special evenings where you feel that the audience just is exactly where you are where I am you know what and and that the journey kind of happens very much together there are other performances where things go very well and but you feel well you know they're happy and I'm happy but there's been more flat more separate experiences but and also when it goes really well with my colleagues if I'm playing you know with other people on the stage and there again a lot of those experiences are very positive and really it goes well and everybody's happy but then some evenings where it really goes beyond that and and that's kind of the inexplicable of the arts and you know I think almost everybody who goes to live performances in the theater in in dance in anything has felt that you know where a lot of what you go to is good but then something you've heard is is way beyond that and you might not even be able to say what it is that that moved you so much but it's a combination of maybe the right music the the way it was performed the dynamic of the hall you know that your your audience members because it's a communal event it's not you're not alone there so that whole energy I think is really real and and I think that's why people go to live music you know whatever type of music it's it exists in every type of performance but you know in the classical world it's it's just it's in some ways more palpable because you have to invest a little bit more of yourself to really get into that you know deep level of of connection and whether or not you know anything about it you can still feel that. My best friend from elementary school back in Romania he played piano his life and actually his parents kind of pushed him into it but he ended up being one of the best in the country right now but there's one thing he told me he he's not a religious person at all but he told me that often when he plays or sometimes when he composes he feels this connection it's almost like a divine connection to something else it's it's not tangible you know it's almost like you said you don't you can't tell what it is this is something you experience in in some way some connection with something beyond the tangible elements of music or piano. I think that's one of the reasons why the passion for doing this doesn't end there's something about being a part of creating this sound that is not just about the technical realization of the material or the understanding of the score but when you when you play you know music of Bach or Brahms or whatever it is and you feel like this is way beyond what we are you know that we're kind of the vessels through which this is being imparted but that we can't I can't really explain how how it's affecting us how it was created and and how you know how it might affect other people and that feeling is kind of an out-of-body you know it's it's just beyond me and in the greatest moments of inspiration I feel that even when I'm not playing often it's when I'm hearing other people play and it's it's so magical that it has I almost feel like it has to just occupy different space and you know yes in the cosmos I guess yes well I can't help but remember Pavarotti's Nessun Dorma from the 94 concert that he had at the last note when he ends you know it feels like he's somewhere else it feels like he's connecting with some other element that that you know he's almost like an out-of-body experience and then he comes back and he hears the applause right so well I think that's the reason why we do that as audience members but also as performers it's like you know it it cleanses us it transports us it makes it takes us somewhere where we just aren't during the day you know we we are 99 of our lives are just spent kind of living life but every so often when you're when you're kind of taken out of your own body in that way it's hard to explain but I think it's it's therapeutic it's it's it makes us better please tell us about some of your favorite composers or pieces that you perform and maybe it's hard to choose one but just give us a sense of what some of them mean to you in that sense well I've thought a lot about this because people always ask well who's your favorite composer what's your favorite piece and I and I never know what to say because I don't really have one you know I there were composers that occupied my attention and my kind of affections at different stages of of my life you know very early on I think the first composer I fell in love with was actually Schumann but it was because maybe I was able to play so much of his young people's music at an early age and just really thought this was the best thing I'd ever heard Bach was another one of course but then came Chopin because he was one that I started playing very early and you know he's kind of a pianist composer there's so much great music written for the piano that to choose one person or one piece is actually impossible but so many different works you know there have been pieces very even small pieces of of Chopin or Rachmaninoff or different composers where I find there's a connection you know to a person or where I played it you know there there's one piece of the fantasy impromptu that I played at my grandmother's funeral or that I played you know when as an encore when my father-in-law who was suffering from Alzheimer's was in the hall sitting next to my wife and his wife and when he no longer recognized us but heard this music he started singing and that was you know just kind of a thought that always stays with me that you know that music was in his head even though we weren't and so you know things like that have I have many connections to different pieces because of things like that but also maybe personal things you know where I was in life where when I started learning a piece or when I was studying a specific work it really kind of it's like a familiar scent you know it brings you back to a different time suddenly yes you're back in your teacher's apartment or you're you're kind of you know you're a kid back in school figuring out you know Bach fugues and stuff you know it's it's it's really an incredible. What did you win with Dove and Well it's a lot of music. So it's different different pieces. It's probably about three hours of music it's about or at least two. A lot of solo music but also in my day a chamber music round and then two concertos with orchestras. The last piece I played was the third concerto of Rachmaninoff which was a dream of mine to play. That it happened there and that I won was just kind of a an incredible experience because it was a piece that as a young Christian never thought I'd be able to play and then having played it for the very first time actually with my school orchestra at Stanford I thought well this is like the dream came true I did it it was it was incredible and then to have it be there and kind of a cornerstone of the career has just you know you never know. Who is John when he's not at the piano? We go behind the curtain to discover his hobbies interests and what he's all about. Well in this next section I want to ask you who's the person behind the music? What do you do when you don't play the piano? What are some of your hobbies interests you know you kind of want to get a sense of who you are behind the music? Well at different stages I guess you're a different person. Right now I'm daddy and that's kind of the thing I want to be most of all. I am happiest when I'm home with my son and my family and my wife and my parents are still here so it's a really wonderful life. I love cooking. I'm not great but I think it's something that I can do and not have to feel the pressure of being good at. It's something that others appreciate and that you know because I love to eat and try foods and all that. It's a nice kind of break from the music and you know other than that just minutes that I can take away from the career. Everything I think with the arts is so all-encompassing. There's almost not a second of the day that part of me isn't really somewhere else thinking about either what I have to do next or even the practical aspects of managing just a career and teaching now. You know one thing that stood out to me that you mentioned in the very beginning of the interview was you were interested in, at the time you were the German composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Bach I think right? And because of that you decided to learn German studies right? So to me that really stands out because you want to understand the music behind and understand really how they got through that, through their culture and through their language and everything. So I would think that if more young people had that kind of mindset would be very beneficial. What do you think made you have that interest or how did someone, what pushed you in that direction to really look deeper into what you really like? Part of it was just the curiosity about what drove these people and why they wrote in the way they did. You know if you connect music and language, it's intrinsically related to culture. You know when you play Russian music, the way Russian composers phrase or choose to create a line is not the same way that Brahms or Schumann chose to create a line. And in some ways when you understand the way people talk and the rhythms they use and the way the cadences happen in the language, it tells you a little bit about why they wrote that way. Because the German language is very different than the Italian and the Asian languages. And so learning that is now with many, many more composers coming out of Asia in different places. You have to also take into account how these people grew up and how they think. And that's just another level of understanding the music that I think we have to strive to comprehend. I think another reason why German occupied such a place is that I early on was interested in song and the vocal compositions of all these composers. The German Lied, the art song was just kind of a dream for me and I couldn't understand any of that except in English. And so I thought, oh, I have to understand what this is about. And now just hearing it sung and what singers have to go through in order to kind of realize the word, the text versus the music aspect is so fascinating. But it's very informative to what I do with no words. It reminds me of a scene from the movie Amadeus when Mozart is being asked to compose an opera and they're debating what language to be in. And they're saying that, well, for opera, Italian is the right language. But we're in Austria, so we want to have it in German. So it's kind of the debate and it's very fascinating. That's right. And it's very different. I mean, if you hear the opera in German, it's very different than if you hear it in Italian or in English. And again, even the way it's written musically is different because of the language. In this last section, John reveals the dream collaboration that would make him drop everything tomorrow and shares the one piece of advice every young musician needs to hear. You won't want to miss his inspiring final message. John, to conclude, I would really be interested in your advice to young people, to students, to kids. You know, there's so many kids learning, playing piano. Maybe they don't have a clear idea where they want to get to, right? They're just learning. Maybe parents push them, but you can sense they really like it, they're really into it. So what would be your advice to young people who do music or arts? You know, I think if more young people studied the arts deeply, I think the world would just be better. But that's just my opinion. I think many would agree with that. Well, I just think that whether or not it is your chosen profession, I think that should be, you know, the secondary consideration when you are young. You know, you should do art, you should do dance, theater, music because you have a compulsion to do so, because you're curious, because it makes everything else better. It makes your understanding of yourself better. You know, it's not just being inspired by something, but it's also figuring out the discipline of pursuing this and how you can relate that to your other experiences in life. I would say that to be in the arts professionally is something that you need to be committed to, because it's not easy. And it's not instant, even financial, you know, gratification for that matter. It's a hard road. But if you see that there's no other world for you to be in, then you should do it. You should, that's maybe who you are. But there's no harm in finding out either. And maybe realizing halfway along the way that this, the stage isn't really for me, teaching isn't really for me, sitting there practicing for 10 hours a day alone isn't really for me. That's an okay realization. But as long as the journey and all of those experiences are put to kind of a positive, self-growing use, then none of that time has been spent in vain. So if you have a skill, if you have a passion, just do it. And one last question. If you were to collaborate with another musician, anyone that you can choose, who would you choose? Actually, you know, that's funny, because my answer might not be what you're looking for, but actually I would want to really play with somebody who's dead. And that is Chopin. Because I find his music so puzzling. You know, just, it is this type of music where in every single person's hands it sounds so radically different that I'd often want to ask and just hear him play and maybe play a little with him and say, why did you write that? And how are you going to play this? How should we be playing this? Because that's kind of my dream. But you know, if it happened, it'd be a little creepy. John, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at sfbay.epochtimes.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.