From the Top

KPBX 91.1 fm, Saturdays, 12noon-1pm

From the Top with host Christopher O'Riley is a weekly radio series that showcases the nation's most exceptional pre-college age classical musicians. Each one-hour prsogram presents five young performers or ensembles whose stunning individual performances are combined with lively interviews, unique pre-produced segments, and lighthearted musical games.

Program Listings
November 22, 2008
A teenage oboe quartet performs Mozart and a 14-year-old pianist from Minnesota plays Liszt at the Aspen Music Festival and School.

November 29, 2008
An archives show, including a performance of a 13-year-old pianist now in medical school. A teenage cellist from Kentucky delivers a nuanced performance of the music of Gabriel Faure.
A teenage trombone quartet performs a contemporary piece by Walter Ross, and we’ll meet a young cellist who has a rather screwball comedy life.

December 6, 2008
From Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, a teenage pianist performs one of the most daunting show pieces for piano and a very young trio performs the exciting final movement of Beethoven’s Piano Trio in C minor.

December 13, 2008
A tiny violinist from Seattle, and the 2007 Junior Division winners of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

December 20, 2008
A 13-year-old pianist and a 9-year-old guitarist
s from Lubbock, Texas

December 27, 2008
A 17-year-old from New Jersey performing the first movement of Debussy's Cello Sonata at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston, MA.

January 3, 2009
A sensational 11-year-old pianist from New York, NY, and a newly formed quartet calling themselves the Bolcom Bros play tribute to Pulitzer prize winning composer William Bolcom.

Meet From the Top Host Christopher O'Riley!

With a grand passion for classical music, a genuine respect for young people, a great voice for radio, and an easy, no-pretensions-allowed manner, acclaimed pianist Christopher O'Riley is the perfect host for Public Radio International's From the Top. Read all about it.

SPR: How did it come about that you're the host of From the Top (FTT)?

Christopher O'Riley: I'm an alum of the New England Conservatory (NEC), class of '81, and Executive Producers Jerry Slavet and Jennifer Hurley-Wales have long associations with NEC. I think they heard me on the radio and saw the piece CBS Sunday Morning did, and were drawn to me because I'm a fairly serious musician … serious but not hopeless!

In the CBS spot, I was waxing rhapsodic about the beauty in the orchestration of a rap arrangement by Public Enemy (the texture was quite magnificent!), and they apparently liked that I can speak eloquently about rap music and still play a Tchaikovsky concerto.

SPR: What in your background allows you move so easily between "high" and popular culture, and how does that inform your role as host?

C.O.: Music was always something I wanted to do. I knew early on I wanted to be a performer, and most of the time, I knew it was classical performance.

For a while, because of our culture, it was really hard in the sixth grade, I was ostracized because of it. Then I was ill for a couple of weeks and decided that to win friends and influence people, I should start a rock-'n'-roll band.

So I got enthusiastic about rock-'n'-roll and jazz. That stayed with me long enough to get involved in NEC, which I chose, in part, because of its extraordinarily tolerant, respectful attitude toward all kinds of musical expression. The president then, Gunther Schuller, insisted that one be well-rounded … adept and expert in many musical forms jazz, improvisation, ragtime, many forms.

I returned to classical music because I decided it was more challenging … revitalizing and reinterpreting works that had been written long ago, rather than reinventing a piece through improvisation or creating new music.

I guess I recall enough of my own experience to understand what the kids on From the Top are up to.

SPR: What do you want FTT to accomplish? What are you going after?

C.O.: I want it first to celebrate the kids who are doing these things. All of the young artists we've had on the show have performed on an extraordinarily professional level. They are really quite exceptional!

But I think the point is, yes, these kids play well, but they may or may not pursue music as a career. It's a way of expressing themselves that they happened upon and that they can't do without. For them, music is an essential part of a well-rounded life.

So first and foremost, I want to celebrate these kids who are great performers but are also just great kids.

Then, and this may be preaching to the choir, FTT is another way of getting live performance into the mix, adding to what shows like Verne Windham produces.

We hear the performers, talk with them, find out what they think about what they play and how they've come to play it … and that becomes a point of entry for our audiences. It's good for the adults who don't know a lot about classical music and great for parents who want to help their kids get excited about it. What better way for a young person to be introduced to classical music than by one of their peers?

My step-brother brought his son to a show. I had never met him before, but it was clear as we were being introduced that he was not at all interested in me … he wanted to go meet the bass player who had performed Rachmaninoff's Vocalise. This is what turned him on, and now he wants to play the double bass!

That spark, that connection … where and how does it happen? Well, here is a dependable place for it to happen. Every week, kids can connect with others who share the same interests, the same point of view … and play the vibraphone or clarinet; they play Brahms, or they write their own music. And kids get to know them as their peers.

Finally, another thing we're trying to do with the program is make it a forum. We have a website. If listeners like the bass player, they can e-mail him. They can start a double-bass chat-room … find out where to buy the instrument they heard, or the sheet music for the piece the quartet performed, or what teachers and summer camps the kids recommend.

The forum can create access to all types of information.

SPR: Where are these astonishingly talented young performers getting their training? Classical music education in the public schools has been in decline for years.

C.O.: It's only on a grassroots level that music exists at all … local music teachers' associations, youth symphonies. Some all-city or all-state groups are sponsored by school districts, but by and large, these are kids who take private lessons.

Music education does generally get the short shrift. It's not seen as preparing students for the SATs, although we do know that listening to Mozart will improve test scores … as the St. Louis Conservatory signs say, "Music builds brains."

SPR: How do you respond to the decline, the failing commitment?

C.O.: It's difficult. How do you rectify that? By dictating that every elementary school student has to play in the orchestra? I don't think that's possible or desirable even if it does develop young minds.

All people can and should have some experience of music, but if you try and prescribe it, if you try and find one musical activity that everybody can be good at, people will really be turned off.

One thing that has helped nationwide is the area symphony performing in local schools. That's holding out a life-preserver. Some kid hears a violinist and says, "That's a beautiful sound. I want to make that sound." Just having that contact, creating that spark I was talking about, can make a tremendous difference.

SPR: So how are the FTT talent searches going? Are you concerned about finding enough young performers to keep the series strong?

C.O.: They're going quite well. There are many umbrella groups through which we're finding kids the Music Educators' National Conference, community youth orchestras like the Spokane Youth Symphony, Musicfest Northwest, the Music Teachers' National Association.

A lot of the public radio stations that are airing the pilot programs are forwarding names to us as well. And we're being contacted via the website, so we're not worried about running out of young talent.

We choose kids not only for their musical abilities, but also because they're interesting kids. It's not a "star search." They do perform at a very high level, but, for example, some are already committed to going on to medical school.

SPR: Where would you like to see FTT in five to ten years?

C.O.: I'd love to see that the show has become part of American musical life. I'd love to see us have that kind of position.

I'd like to be talking to professional musicians who say they heard Maya Shankar play violin on FTT and were inspired by that … to be at a concert and learn that a non-musician heard a clarinetist play Brahms on the show and got interested in classical music.

I'd like it to have the effect on American life that it's meant to. I'd like to see the classical music audience my audience thriving!

SPR: Before we close, can you share a little more of your own musical experience?

C.O.: Sure. I started playing at four. I attended Catholic school, and my mother had taught me to read before I entered kindergarten. When I started, the nuns were very displeased, saying I was going to be bored and cause trouble, and they didn't want any trouble-makers.

So they gave us a choice, an ultimatum really. I could either take French or piano … $15 a week. My mother chose piano, and my earliest memories are of seeing how everything was laid out on the staff, finding middle C, and how it all made sense. So music started very early on.

I wasn't playing concerts in short pants, but I took lessons throughout my childhood. As I said, I got interested in other kinds of music for a while, but finally settled into classical music.

I did all of my training at NEC and spent three summers at Tanglewood. I won prizes in all of the competitions I entered, never winning first prize but winning enough awards to garner the accolades needed to start a concert career.

I do a lot of different things - From the Top, recitals, concertos, tango concerts, a dance project with Martha Clark. I just had a piece written for me by guitarist Ralph Towner that I premiered in New York in May.

That's what I'm up to. I do different things and thoroughly enjoy them all.

SPR: Any parting thoughts?

C.O.: Live performance of classical music is arresting. Few listening experiences compare to hearing a live performance with its magic, intimacy, and energy.

This is the way classical music was meant to be heard. From the Top will serve the KPBX audience well, bringing that magic to listeners young and old.