On Saturday night we taped an episode of the radio show at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in Boston. It was bittersweet for us because we dedicated the show to one of the major forces behind From the Top, Francis Hunnewell, who passed away last week. He was a huge supporter of young musicians, and the wonderful kids performing in his honor created a touching and fitting tribute.
Saturday was also an example that in show business anything can happen but you must carry on. Our production manager Elizabeth DeVore, who was injured while loading in the equipment, speaks to that in this video clip.
18-year-old cellist Bobby Chen opened the show with a gorgeous performance of Tchaikovsky’s Pezzo Capriccioso. We were then introduced to 16-year-old violinist Gergana Haralampieva and 14-year-old pianist Phuong Nghi Pham, both of whom shared inspiring stories of immigrating to the city of Boston from their native countries.
Matthew Muckey and his donkey, Jasper
Following their performances, we were reintroduced to Matthew Muckey, an extraordinary trumpet player who was originally on our show in 2002 at the age of 18. Back then he played Arban’s flashy Carnival of Venice and spoke about his unusual pet – a shaggy grey donkey named “Jasper.”
Matthew has done pretty well for himself since then. Now 25, he is the associate principal trumpet player in the New York Philharmonic! Of course, when he arrived at rehearsal for our show he was bombarded with questions about scoring such a phenomenal gig right out of college. As for me, I rushed up and breathlessly asked him about Jasper. I was relieved to learn that his hairy donkey is still alive and kicking (though greyer and shaggier than ever).
Matthew Muckey today. Photo by Caroline Cardiasmenos.
During the show, Matthew wowed the audience yet again, this time showing a more melodic side of the trumpet with a piece by Oskar Boehme. The show closed with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra performing the overture to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, an exciting ending to a wonderful taping. Make sure to tune in when this show airs the week of March 29th.
On every broadcast, Christopher O’Riley performs a piece during the station break. Our live audiences are treated to the full performance, though on the broadcast only a portion of the performance is heard.
Among the break pieces Chris is performing this season is the world premiere of “Falling Canons” by Grammy Award winner Kenneth Fuchs. The first of these performances was included on our Salt Lake City broadcast, and the second of which is included on this week’s broadcast. Chris will continue to perform the remaining canons periodically on our broadcasts.
Chris told us more about this premiere:
Grammy Award-winning American composer Kenneth Fuchs’ most recent work includes an aria for baritone and orchestra entitled Falling Man, based on J. D. McClatchy’s excerpted material from Don Delillo’s eponymous 9/11 novel. As Ken was working on the piece, he became fascinated with the machinations within the thematic material, and decided to create a series of piano pieces more rigorously exploring the motivic possibilities. The resultant work, Falling Canons, is a set of 7 canons, each springing from a descending scalar and rhythmic degree (#1 at the unison ending on B, #2 at the second ending on A; each with attention to rhythmic permutations inherent in each degree). The aria and the piano pieces are set to premiere in the coming year, with a subsequent recording in Vienna soon after.
I am proud to be Ken’s chosen advocate for this new piece, and as each canon is relatively short, I thought it would be nice to roll out each in premiere performances as part of From The Top tapings around the country.”
Samuel Gaskin, Yurie Mitsuhashi and Vijay Venkatesh
This week’s broadcast was recorded at the Mary Gibbs Jones Concert Hall at Baylor University in Waco, TX on November 11, 2009. We asked the performers to tell us about the music they performed. Here are their thoughts:
Yurie Mitsuhashi, 17, violin
Danse Hongroise by Sergei Rachmaninoff
“This piece is very powerful and majestic. I enjoy how the piece is structured. The beginning and end are very fast and frantic, and sandwiched between the two is a contrasting sequence of a heavy violin melody followed by an exchange of roles between the violin and piano.
This piece reminds me of a particular scene in the Lord of the Rings movie, where a war is interrupted briefly by Oliphants, but battle ensues again soon after.”
Vijay Venkatesh, 18, piano
The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa, arr. Vladimir Horowitz
“This piece has a huge emphasis on the military march theme. In addition, there are so many different voices in the music that are like different instruments playing that you have to level out which voices are heard more than others.” Read more »
Approximately 70 young string players met in Montgomery, Alabama over the weekend to compete in the Montgomery Symphony’s annual Blount-Slawson Competition for string and percussionists in 7th through 12th grades. For the first time, From the Top’s Music Producer Tom Vignieri was among the panel of 9 judges. Congratulations go out to this year’s winners!
Top prize in the competition is $10,000, a chance to perform with the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra during its final concert this year, and the opportunity to be featured on From the Top. The remaining finalists also split about $7,000 worth of prize money. Read more.
Greetings from somewhere high above the clouds on my flight back to Boston. This has been quite the tour! After spending over a week in Hawaii and then the past few days in California, I’m almost frightened to be going back to the wintry conditions at home.
We taped a wonderful show last night at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara. I was especially excited to look out into the audience and see one of From the Top’s biggest fans – Bassoon Bob! He is a bassoonist in his nineties who has been a devoted listener since we first started airing ten years ago. He traveled all the way from his home in Reno to take his granddaughter Emily to our taping. It was so wonderful to see him there!
The musicianship in the Santa Barbara show really struck me. Read more »
Rieko Tsuchida with her older sister and fellow From the Top alum Mayumi.
Like many, 15-year-old Bay-area pianist Rieko Tsuchida was deeply saddened by the disaster in Haiti and inspired to take action. With just three days of planning, she and friend Jonah Hopton, turned their musical talents into a means of raising money for the American Red Cross. We are so proud of her efforts.
In her own words, here’s how she did it:
We began contacting various local churches last week and got a call back from the Mt. Tamalpais United Methodist Church on Wednesday night (luckily for me, that church had just invested in a brand new Steinway B). With only about three days until our concert was on, tenor Jonah Hopton and I frantically started making flyers and announcing the concert at school, on facebook, through e-mails, phone calls, etc. I had come up with the idea of the concert, and so I was nervous when I was put in charge of organizing everything! Jonah and I managed to come up with a great program ranging from Bach and Handel to Chopin and Ravel.
It was a total surprise on the day of the event when over 150 people showed up, crammed into the church sanctuary! The audience consisted of people from the local senior citizen home, parents who came with their young children after seeing the flyers around town, kids my age, and church members. One thing they all had in common was their love for music and their willingness to help others in need.
The feedback was so positive and various people came up to us afterwards asking if we could perform at their organizations and venues. Lots of people from our high school showed up, too, which was so great! Some were friends, but others just came with their families. I wasn’t expecting that, as 99% of the people at my school don’t listen to classical music, ever. In total, we raised $2,432 and counting. Some people were so impressed with the concert that they promised to send more money! Jonah and I will be sending all our proceeds to Haiti via the American Red Cross Society.
All in all, I would say this concert was even better than planned, especially with only three days to put it together! Thank you again to each of you who came. This never could have happened without the support of you all.
Rieko will appear on From the Top’s broadcast taping in Santa Barbara tomorrow evening with her piano trio, the Soleil Trio.
Aloha from one of the most magical places on earth – Hawaii’s Big Island, where we just completed two tapings of the radio show, plus a week of educational visits in local schools with our partner Hawaii Public Radio.
The Big Island is such a fascinating place. I’ve been told there are eleven different climate zones here. In our few days on the island, we’ve experienced dry desert, chilly rain, lush forests, vog (that’s volcanic ash fog that burns your throat), and the kind of tropical beaches you usually only see on postcards. There’s also a huge snow-capped mountain here, where people drive up to stargaze. Amazing! I’ve included a short video of my drive across the island with From the Top’s Production Manager Elizabeth DeVore.
Alum Lauren Chipman, who recently returned for an episode of From the Top, will be performing in this Friday’s “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon. Lauren, a violist and member of indie rock band The Rentals, will be working with Christina Aguilera and John Legend during the two-hour performance show. “I’m really looking forward to playing with these artists in addition to helping to bring aid to the people of Haiti,” she says. More than 100 artists have signed on to help raise funds for victims of the earthquake. The show will air commercial-free across ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, BET, the CW, HBO, MTV, VH1 and CMT on Friday at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Learn more about the special.
Fans of the show are often asking about Christopher O’Riley’s laptop he uses to read music. Here’s what our host says about replacing traditional page-turners with the convenience of new technology:
Christopher O'Riley reading music from his tablet laptop.
The means by which I receive my performance scores for From the Top, both televised and radio broadcasts, is the marriage of a tablet laptop (in my case, a Gateway), the scanning and page editing parameters available in Photoshop Elements (the simplest version of Photoshop), and software called eStand, with accompanying footswitch pedal.
The tablet laptop allows me to have the screen pivoted right to the edge of the piano frame for easy reading. I scan two pages side-by-side for each screen I read from, similar to that side-by-side format in regularly printed piano music. eStand stores all the scanned pages in its own format, and these pages (thousands, if you want) are ordered by the program, and scrolled through by means of a foot pedal, attached via USB cable, forwards or backwards, as you like.
I can’t imagine whether this manner of reading music is destined for any long-term utility; I only know I wanted a cleaner, page-turner-free, look for the TV show, and simultaneous with that, found myself with endless accordioned pages of my Radiohead (et alia) arrangements. The eStand allows me to do away with the paper, and can also accommodate notations (via the tablet laptop technology) applied after scanning. It’s a real convenience for me. —Christopher O’Riley
