Whatever Happened To ...


Clifton Williams won third place in the DC- CaPital stars Talent Competition in March.


University and Berklee College of Music in Boston, which offered him a presidential scholarship. He will attend Berklee next year. Clifton also has played at the White


House and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A performance at a party hosted by Nancy Prendergast, the president of a local chamber group, led to another opportunity. “I did a whole concert, an hour and


a half of classical music,” Clifton recalls. Prendergast was bragging about Clifton to neighbor Donna Eacho, the wife of U.S. Ambassador to Austria William Eacho. She helped arrange for Clifton to perform in Austria. In March, he flew to Vienna, where


... the D.C. piano prodigy


by DeNeeN browN it has been a year since the story of Clifton Williams, the teenage classical piano player from Southeast Washington, appeared in The Washington Post. The story captured his quiet resolve to compete at a national level. Clifton’s life had ascended steadily,


like a rising movement in a sonata. He hadn’t begun playing classical music until 14, much later than other classical students. Still, he was determined to rise to the top, rise above doubt.


For the original story, go to washingtonpost.com/magazine.


“After the article, so many strangers


reached out to me,” says Clifton, now 18. “It felt really great that so many people care about young artists like me.” He was offered dozens of pianos from strangers. He donated two to his school, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and one to his church, Pilgrim Rest Baptist in Northeast. As a high school junior, he had


won a $10,000 scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which partners with NPR’s “From the Top” to help exceptionally promising low-income students. With the scholarship, Clifton attended music camps at Princeton University, Indiana


he slept and dined at the ambassador’s residence and went to concerts with the ambassador’s family, says Erin Haran MacCurtain, spokeswoman for “From the Top,” NPR’s showcase for the country’s best young classical musicians. He performed classical and jazz,


Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, in four concerts in Vienna and then flew to Paris, where he gave a concert for UNESCO. “It’s mind-blowing,” Clifton said. “This just shows me what life has in store.”


The Chosen


30 // Te percentage of applicants who are accepted to Berklee College of Music


(Continued from Page 5)


Joyce Motors. My grandfather started Joyce Motors 70 years ago. My dad spent his whole life here. Mothers and wives tend to fade into the background sometimes, or at least I did. But it was time to pull on the cowgirl boots and stand up for myself. When someone says something


gruff, I don’t immediately say “I’m sorry” and shrink away, like I used to. I don’t just nod my head and go along or


ANSWER Ben’s Chili Bowl 6 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | June 13, 2010


ask my dad about every little thing, like I did when I started. And I’ve learned to stand my ground with him. Two years ago, my fiance died


suddenly. [Work] was the best distraction. I was broken, and I’d spend the day caught up in solving other people’s problems. Every so often, I’d have to go in the bathroom and lose it for a minute. That’s when it really started to sink in. It’s not like I could just quit; I own the place. I think a lot of women like seeing me here because they know I won’t


rip them off. I have the ability to calm people down. Being a teacher, you learn to be patient. You need that when talking to people about their cars. I’m the one that has to give them the bad news about what is often a very, very personal possession. My daughter is a teacher, too, and loves working here in the summer. I can hear the pride in her voice when she says “we” to customers. It’s times like that when I’d look up at this picture of my grandfather hanging in the office and say, “I bet you never imagined this.”


PHOTOGRAPH BY SUSAN BIDDLE


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