(The name of the program’s network distributor, Public Radio International, has been corrected in the headline and in subsequent references in this text.)
It is a winter Saturday afternoon backstage at the Evanston Cultural Center, and the air is alive with the tootles, blats and scratches of young brass and string players warming up. Out front, audio engineers are fiddling with microphones and doing sound checks, in preparation for the taping of a most unusual radio show. Except for a guitarist from Tennessee, all the musicians who are about to perform are from the Chicago area. An audience of several hundred friends and doting family members is there to cheer them on.
Gerald Slavet, the show’s senior executive producer, stops what he is doing long enough to talk about his brainchild, “From the Top,” one of the most original classical music programs — also the most popular — in the history of Public Radio International. With his luxurious white beard and red cardigan sweater, the former theater company director looks like Santa Claus — a fitting image for a man who dispenses inspiring gifts, the gifts of live classical music, over the airwaves.
Since the first broadcast of “From the Top” little more than two years ago, Slavet explains, the show has built a devoted following. More than 500,000 tune in each week over more than 230 stations nationwide to hear teenagers perform classical music and talk about why they are turned on by it. This loyal listenership refutes the widespread notions that classical music appeals only to a fringe public and that the MTV generation couldn’t care less about Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and all those other long-dead composers.
“We don’t set out with missionary goals,” Slavet says. “We won’t teach anybody how to play the violin. We introduce you to some high-achiever kids who love music but who also have a passion for Pokemon, languages, skiing, movies and the World Wrestling Federation. These are regular kids, the future leaders of our country. Why not celebrate them?”
A red light flashes to signal the start of the taping. Producer Tom Voegeli pumps up the crowd before announcer Joanne Robinson introduces the show’s host, Christopher O’Riley. A professional pianist who pursues a busy international career when he’s not playing father-confessor and accompanist to young musicians on the radio, O’Riley looks like a young Robin Williams — indeed, he invests his emcee duties with something similar to that actor’s elfin verbal energy.
Just minutes into the show, it becomes clear he is the sparkplug of the program, the guy who helps leaven what could easily have been just another teen talent show with the quirky, laid-back charm of Public Radio’s long-running hit, “Prairie Home Companion.”
O’Riley brings on Abraham Feder, a 16-year-old Chicago cellist, and the two launch into a spirited account of the Allegro movement from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata. In their conversation following the performance, the host prods Feder into confessing he is fond of junk food. From there the show segues into a mock-documentary about “chronic hollow-leg syndrome” — typical of the skits presented on “From the Top” that remind listeners that the show’s participants are typical teenagers, apart from being musically gifted.
Other musicians appearing on the program — including Rachel Kudo, a 14-year-old pianist from Northbrook–join in the spoof, testifying to the terrible effects of what O’Riley soberly calls “this tragic disease.” The sketch ends with the emcee surrendering a bag of potato chips to the cellist, who crunches them into the microphone.
Rachel Levin, the 16-year-old trombonist from Lincolnshire who leads the Midwest Young Artists Brass Quintet, tells O’Riley that once, during a particularly frustrating rehearsal, she threw a shoe at Ethan Bensdorf, a 17-year-old from Evanston who plays first trumpet in the ensemble. Bensdorf turns red. There’s more bantering with the players before the quintet delivers a rousing jazz number. “That really kicks brass!,” O’Riley exclaims.
With that, another segment of “From the Top” is in the can. The 90 minutes of performance, chat and verbal vaudeville, edited down to an hourlong program, airs locally in its regular Chicago time slot at 5 p.m. Saturday on WFMT-FM 98.7.
The talented young instrumentalists and singers who come from cities and towns across the land to appear on “From the Top” may not be as lionized as the teenage jocks who can dunk basketballs or pitch a no-hitter, but they, too, are heroes. They know it takes as much hard work and dedication to master the clarinet as it does to be the quarterback of their high school’s football team. Thanks to the radio show, so do tens of thousands of radio listeners.
What’s special about “From the Top” is that it presents young classical musicians as role models at a time when the entertainment industry and the media portray teenagers much more narrowly and provide no encouragement whatsoever for them to study serious music. After all, Britney Spears doesn’t sing Mozart, and MTV doesn’t play videos of the top American string quartets. As Slavet explains, the youngsters he and his staff tap to appear on “From the Top” study and play music simply because it strikes a chord deep inside them.
Universal appeal
“I have no musical background, and that made me keen on the idea that the show should appeal to everyone,” he says. “That means it shouldn’t talk down to anybody or go over anybody’s head. Back when we were still fine-tuning the show’s concept, I knew that appealing to a wide audience would not be a problem as long as we were honest in our presentation.” “From the Top” tapes its segments at music conservatories and festivals across the nation, which keeps Slavet and his production team of 24 constantly hopping, sorting through audition tapes, scheduling pre-interviews and lining up concert-taping dates for the hundreds of talented young musicians who they select to appear on the program each year.
The show’s breezy style and something-for-everyone format find sympathetic ears with younger listeners who identify with the 9-to-18-year-olds they hear on the radio — even if their own musical tastes run more to the Backstreet Boys than Beethoven. “The people we hope to reach are people who are afraid of this music and who think they cannot be open to the experience,” O’Riley says.
“The kids we put on the show represent an interesting cross section of young people who love music but are not necessarily thinking in terms of music as a career,” adds the 45-year-old O’Riley, who grew up in Chicago and graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, the show’s home base.
“I will be talking to a 13-year-old who plays the violin and she will say, `This is what I love to do — and, by the way, I love playing soccer too.’ We don’t set out to cheapen classical music, nor do we represent it as something it’s not. Our program is very unserious, and we are having a great time doing it.”
Connecting with musicians
The pianist’s easy way of connecting with the young musicians who appear on “From the Top” is a central reason for its success, Slavet believes. “Chris has this incredibly eclectic view of teenage life. He watches sci-fi flicks and knows all the rap groups. He knows their world.” (True enough: O’Riley is a big fan of the rock band Radiohead.)
“Besides being a wonderful pianist, he really guides the show because he works so well with all the performers,” agrees Lauren Chipman, an 18-year-old violist from Lake Forest, a freshman at the University of Southern California, who has appeared twice on the program.
Most of the young instrumentalists and singers appearing on “From the Top” already know they will wind up working as pharmacists and accountants and schoolteachers rather than playing Carnegie Hall. What the show gives them is a means to hone their skills before a national radio audience — but also a chance to reflect on what drove them to take up the flute or double bass to begin with.
“The show is a different and really cool opportunity for performance. It kind of makes me even more excited about my playing,” says Dana Anderson, a 14-year-old violinist from Arlington Heights, one of a dozen students from the Winnetka-based Music Institute of Chicago who have appeared on the show since it went on the air in January 2000.
Steve Robinson has been one of the series’ most enthusiastic cheerleaders since he served as network manager for Nebraska Public Radio in the late 1990s. As a matter of fact, “From the Top” was the first program he put on the air after he became WFMT’s station head in August 2000.
“I thought this is a show whose time has come, because I’ve always felt that we in this country don’t shine enough of a spotlight on our gifted young musicians, certainly not the way we do with our young athletes,” he says. “I truly believe this is the most important program on radio right now.”
Back when Slavet was peddling “From the Top” to other radio executives a couple of years ago, few jumped on the concept as avidly as Robinson. “At a public radio convention they asked me, `Why would we broadcast kids no one has ever heard of when we can broadcast Yo-Yo Ma?'” Slavet recalls. So he prepared an aural test, mixing taped performances by young amateur musicians and professionals, then asked his colleagues which was which. They couldn’t tell the difference. Slavet had made his point. More and more public radio outlets — WFMT is one of the few commercial exceptions — began picking up the show. The rest is broadcast history.
Carefully formatted as is each segment of “From the Top,” there is always room for irreverence and surprises. One recent segment presented a 12-step program for stage mothers. And there are plenty of spontaneous remarks that never make it onto the air. “On one show we had two fantastic young Norwegian fiddlers who brought along their toy dog, who travels everywhere with them. I joked that I never [travel] without my inflatable Reese Witherspoon doll. We had to edit that line out, of course.”
“From the Top” tapes half of its 26 shows a year at the New England Conservatory — a partner in the series — and is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The rest of the segments originate at music schools, music camps and festivals such as Ravinia, where a program was taped last summer.
Monumental growth
The show has grown so big in nearly two years that radio can no longer contain it. “From the Top” has spun off a classroom component, a CD of solo piano pieces played by O’Riley and a series of TV specials in development for PBS.
Already up and running is a Web site — www.fromthetop.org — which O’Riley describes as “a big music chat room” where, for example, a 14-year-old flutist in Missouri can find sheet music or a mother can locate a teacher for the budding fiddler in the family. Nowhere else on the Web can so many questions of that sort be answered, says Jennifer Hurley-Wales, the show’s executive producer.
For his part, O’Riley is convinced “From the Top” is having an impact on American broadcast culture precisely because it celebrates kids who love life as much as they love music — and because it allows many radio listeners to connect with the classical music experience without their realizing it.
Says the pianist: “Not long ago one of the show’s big boosters went into an auto parts store in which a radio happened to be playing the program.
She looked around and there was nobody in the store except two old guys behind the counter who were silently absorbed in what they were hearing. She asked if they are classical music fans. They very indignantly replied, `That’s not classical music — that’s “From the Top”!”‘
