Thirteen-and-a-half years of fine tuning his finger work on the ebony and ivory keys of other people’s pianos paid off in a big way for Kansas University student Amir Khosrowpour.

He played more than 45 minutes of memorized classical music well enough for judges to award him first place Monday at a national competition in Cincinnati. The exclamation point: Khosrowpour gets to fly to New York to pick out his very own Steinway grand piano worth $35,000.

Too bad he lives in a dorm.

But Khosrowpour said he’ll find a safe home for his new instrument  either in a rehearsal room at Murphy Hall or his parents’ house in Irvine, Calif.

Fellow music student and trumpeter Chris Nierman brought home second-place honors in the competition’s brass division.

Khosrowpour, 20, an Irvine, Calif., senior, and Nierman, 21, a Lincoln, Neb., junior, advanced from the state National Music Teachers Assn. competition in November in Pittsburg to regionals, where they competed against musicians from eight other states in January.

For Khosrowpour, who’s been playing piano since he was 7, this was the biggest competition of his life. He suspects emotion was the key to his success.

“One thing that you have to be able to do at a competition like this is be expressive,” he said. “The music kind of has to be one with you. You have to be able to convince the audience of what the music is saying. I thought I was able to communicate the music pretty well.”

Among the works Khosrowpour committed to memory for the competition were a Lowell Liebermann concerto, Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata and Chopin’s Barcarolle, Opus 60. Khosrowpour has been working on some of the music for as long as 2 1/2 years.

“The memory thing  it works itself into the fingers,” he said. “Then, you really need to go beyond that and hear the melody in your head and know where each note is going and why it’s there.”

Nierman played a 45-minute trumpet program of pieces such as a trumpet concerto by Hummel and a George Antheil sonata. He said he was a bit nervous for the competition

“I felt like I played fairly well,” said Nierman, who took up the trumpet at age 10. “Although I felt like I’ve probably played that program better in the past.”

His performance was good enough to earn him second place and a $100 merit award.

Nierman, a member of the KU basketball pep band, missed out on the Jayhawks’ first- and second-round NCAA Tournament games last weekend because he was at the Cincinnati competition. It was worth it, he said, but he’s glad today to be in Madison, Wis., to play in a less competitive environment  at least as far as music is concerned.

“Playing the pep band is more of a fun thing,” he said. “While we do try to play as well as we can, it’s more based on the energy and supporting the team.”