From the Top

Member of the Electronic Dance Music group, MAKO, Alex Seaver speaks with guest host Peter Dugan and French Horn player, Zach Potts.

This episode of From the Top was recorded in the famed Hollywood Scoring Studio in Los Angeles. We meet a brilliant young pianist who grew up in Hollywood enjoying film music so much that she founded her own multi-disciplinary arts collaborative at her high school. Also on the program is a heroic performance of a piece by Planel for horn and a teenage violinist rocks Ravel's virtuosic "Tzigane" with guest host Peter Dugan.

This week's From the Top celebrates the 125th Anniversary of one of the great teaching grounds for classical musicians, the Walnut Hill School for the Arts! You might recognize this episode's guest host from his roles on The Wire and HBO's The Deuce, but you may not know Lawrence Gilliard Jr. is also a fantastic clarinetist. Listen as he introduces to us current students and a few illustrious alumni of Walnut Hall. || Learn more at http://bit.ly/FTT365

From the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek, Colorado, this week's From the Top features the ground-breaking violinist Charles Yang as the guest host. He'll share the stage with a joyful teenager whose winning personality propelled her to take home the gold medal at the prestigious 2018 Stulberg International String Competition. We'll also meet a young erhu player, an instrument known to some as the "Chinese violin", who plays "Taichi Warrior of Erhu" by Chen Jun.

This week's guest host is Molly Yeh a young chef with her own show on the Food Channel called "Girl Meets Farm." But before she developed an interest in food, she was an extraordinary classical percussionist who appeared on From the Top over a decade ago when she was just 15-years-old. This week, she returns to introduce us to an impressive lineup of young musicians including a talented teenage bassoonist from rural Oklahoma and a 17-year-old pianist who delivers a fiery performance of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.