Dallas / Fort Worth Local News

FORT WORTH (AP) ― IBM engineer Viktors Berstis comes by his musical talent naturally: He was born at a refugee camp where his parents met while singing in a choir.

Berstis was just 10 months old when his family moved to Michigan, and his uncle -- who had started the choir for the Latvian refugees at the camp near Nurnberg, Germany -- began teaching him how to play the piano when he was 7.

"At first I hated it, but my mom made me continue, and now I'm very thankful," said Berstis, 58, who lives in Austin. "I enjoy playing because when I sit down at the keyboard, my mind is removed from work."

Berstis is one of 75 competitors in the Van Cliburn Foundation's Fifth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, which started Monday. The weeklong event, for those age 35 and older who don't earn their living teaching or playing the piano, is at Texas Christian University.

Among the competitors from around the world are a food industry technologist, a federal judge and a retired national coach for the French Tennis Federation.

The event is an offshoot of the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, named for the acclaimed pianist who gained prominence after winning the first Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958. The Cliburn contest is now held every four years in the pianist's hometown of Fort Worth, most recently in 2005.

Cliburn's contest for amateurs started in 1999 and then was held in the even years until 2004. Starting this year, organizers decided to hold it every four years so there will be two years between it and the main Cliburn competition.

The word "amateurs" in the name may be misleading; many competitors are classically trained pianists. This year's judges include three past winners of Cliburn's main contest.

Berstis took piano lessons until he was a teenager, found time to practice some in college and even played the keyboard in a band.

Berstis, who has worked for IBM Corp. for 30 years, now oversees technical operations for the company's World Community Grid project, in which people donate unused time on their computers to be used for research projects. One research effort that would have taken 100 years to process took a year and a half, Berstis said.

This is Berstis' fourth time competing at the Cliburn.

"My prize is being able to come here and see my old friends," Berstis said. "It's fun to go to the parties and fun to do something entirely different than I do in my everyday life."

Among the first time Cliburn competitors is Matthew B. Hand, an international relief operations worker. Hand, 43, who spent 15 years in the Middle East, now runs his relief programs for Kurdish girls and others from his home base in Fort Pierce, Fla.

Hand started playing the piano in the fifth grade and once considered a career as a concert pianist. But after realizing his life would take on a single focus, he left after one semester at the North Carolina School of the Arts and later moved to Israel.

After learning about conflict in the region while working as a laborer for three years, Hand then "bummed around" Turkey, where he studied the broader Islamic world, he said. He learned the language, met various leaders and developed a reputation for his work in conflict resolution, which led to his work with relief groups.

For Hand, the piano is like a "confessional booth" and helps him process the traumatic situations he has seen and experienced, including some brushes with death, he said.

"It's a very integral part of my life," Hand said. "I don't know if I could stay sane if I didn't have it."

He said his goal for the Cliburn competition is simple.

"My fears aren't of not winning or of not advancing," Hand said. "I just want people to get pleasure out of my playing."

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