They arrived in Texas on Sunday as doctors, lawyers, scientists, retired teachers and stay-at-home moms. But for the past glorious week, the 69 contestants in the Cliburn Amateur international competition were something else: Concert pianists on a global stage.

The three San Diego County contestants who made it into the Cliburn Amateur in Fort Worth once dreamed of concert careers, but for financial and other reasons were forced to set their dreams aside. Technology expert Gorden Cheng, 35, is now a vice president at eMolecules in La Jolla; Dr. John Guthiel, 59, is the CEO of SciQuus Oncology in La Jolla; and South Africa-born Tessa Knipe Heunis, 53, is Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice.

Cheng — who advanced the farthest in the Cliburn competition, to the top 12 semifinals before his elimination Thursday night — said his story is much like that of the many close friends he’s met on the amateur contest circuit. Although they’ve pursued diverse and challenging careers, the piano remains a passion, mainstay and motivator in their lives.

“Music is something that I’ve learned a lot of discipline from,” said Cheng, who lives in Rancho Santa Fe with his wife, Judy, and their sons Alex, 2, and Jamie, 1. “The goal of always pushing yourself to improve no matter what is something you can apply to playing the piano and to a successful career.”

Headshot for John Guthiel, CEO of SciQuus Oncology in La Jolla and a competitor in the 2016 Cliburn Amateur international piano competition.

The Cliburn Amateur, launched in 1999 and now held every four years, was created for people like Cheng: Adults 35 and over who have played for years with great passion but never professionally. The six finalists in this year’s contest, which concludes June 25, include software engineers from Northern California and North Carolina, a retired New York ophthalmologist, a French strategy consultant, a German doctor and a Canadian periodontist.

“We’ve seen people from all walks of life, particularly a lot of doctors, so perhaps there’s a connection between music and medicine,” said Maggie Estes, The Cliburn’s director of marketing and public relations. “But one thing that brings them all together is their love of the piano.”

Cheng was born in China and immigrated to the U.S. with his parents when he was 5. He grew up in Dallas, where he started piano lessons on an electronic keyboard at the age of 8.

“My mom made me take piano lessons and I didn’t like it,” he said. “I wanted to stay home and play Nintendo. But I always learned everything my teacher taught me and I played well, so I stuck with it.”

Tessa Knipe Heunis, deputy attorney general for the California Department of Justice and a competitor in the 2016 Cliburn Amateur international piano competition.

Things changed when he got to college and discovered that the University of Texas at Dallas had a beautiful Steinway piano he could play whenever he wanted. Before, between and after his computer science classes, he played the Steinway under the mentorship of professor and composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez.

“He taught me to focus not on just playing notes but on shaping and forming sound and creating character, which was really special to me,” Cheng said.

Yet even as his passion for the piano grew, Cheng knew he didn’t stand a chance in the music world. He discovered his vocation too late to have built the skills, technique and repertoire to keep pace with former child prodigies who started competing in their tweens. After graduating, he moved to San Diego in 2003 and worked his way up in the IT industry at companies like Qualcomm, Sony and the election software firm Everyone Counts. In April, he joined eMolecules, a chemical molecules database firm.

Not long before he got married four years ago, Cheng started competing in amateur piano competitions. It was a chance to learn new repertoire and build up his skills by practicing three hours each night after work. Since 2011, he has placed in contests in Chicago, Colorado Springs, Boston, Washington, D.C., and also in Paris and Warsaw, Poland.

Gorden Cheng semifinals round

“The best part of it is the people you meet,” Cheng said of his fellow contestants. “It’s a closed community of great people who love to talk about music and share their playing with each other. I’m so thankful for all the friendships I’ve been able to form in the U.S., Germany, Mexico, Canada and even Japan. They’re like my extended family.”

Guthiel and Knipe Heunis both studied piano seriously when they were young but set it aside for decades to pursue other careers. Both made it into the top 30 at Cliburn Amateur, but were eliminated in the quarterfinals round on Tuesday.

John Guthiel quarterfinals round

In his teens, Guthiel finished two years as a piano performance major at Cal State Northridge before leaving for medical school and then a career as a oncology clinical physician. The La Jolla resident now runs SciQuus, an oncology clinical research firm, and also runs marathons, enjoys woodworking and studying Italian literature and art. He continued to play piano over the years but said he felt that training for a competition would give him “additional ideas about how to continue improving my piano playing.”

Knipe Heunis was a child prodigy in her native Cape Town. At age 9, she played piano on the “Young South Africa” television show, and two years later she performed as a soloist with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. At 17, she was awarded a four-year scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, but she turned it to down to study the law. After 35 years away from the piano, the mother of two grown daughters said she realized “how central the piano is to my life” and decided last year to get back into competition shape.

Tessa Knipe Heunis quarterfinals round

This year’s Cliburn Amateur received 159 applications. The jury narrowed their choices to 72, and 69 of those, from 18 countries, traveled to Texas to compete. The competitors ranged in age from 35 to 73. When the Cliburn Amateur launched in 1999 it was the only international competition for amateurs. Many have been launched since, but the Cliburn name gives a measure of prestige to this contest, Estes said.

The Van Cliburn Foundation is named for the 23-year-old American pianist who shocked the world by winning the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Cold War Russia in 1958. In his honor, the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was launched in 1962 and has since propelled the international careers of dozens of major pianists. Cliburn passed away in 2013.

Cheng said prepping for the Cliburn was no easy task with a new job, a wife and two toddlers, but he got up early every morning to practice for 45 minutes and then spent another hour at the keyboard each night after the boys went to bed. He also multi-tasked by practicing while watching World Cup soccer and Ultimate Fighting matches on his laptop.

“I’ve been a UFC fan for 10 years. I think there’s a similarity to people getting knocked out and playing difficult pieces,” he said. “I admire these fighters’ passion and their athleticism. It’s like a professional pianist who plays huge, huge programs that are really awesome and impressive.”

This past week, Cheng sailed through the prelims and quarterfinals, then played a half-hour program of Russian ballet suites by Prokofiev and Stravinsky in the semis. To psyche himself up before performances, he said he likes to put his headphones and listen to AC/DC and Michael Jackson just before he goes onstage.

“I love rock music because it gets me pumped up and clears my head,” he said.

Making it into the top 12 in the world was thrilling, Cheng said, and further incentive to keep competing. He plans to take a year off to focus on family and study some new repertoire. Then he’ll be back at it again, and for the rest of his life.

“I will always keep competing,” he said. “I want to continue to improve and there’s enough repertoire out there for two lifetimes.”