Category: Uncategorized

Good and Good for You: It’s Beethoven’s 5th Symphony – in Japanese?! Watch the English-subtitled version above, or the one with slightly better video quality (and no subtitles) here. From The Collaborative Piano Blog. Keep reading for more excerpts we like this week.

If you enjoy singing with your neighbors, congregation, or classmates, you’re taking an increasingly popular path to a successful life. According to a new study by Chorus America, an estimated 42.6 million adults and children regularly sing in choruses today, and 32.5 million of those are adults! More than 1 in 5 US households have […]

From the Top performers share why playing music is meaningful to them – even though it takes a lot of hard work! Tell us your story, by leaving a comment below.

From the Top was honored today by the National Arts Learning Collaborative (NALC)  and the Massachusetts Arts Education Collaborative (MAEC) with the “Media Support for Arts Education Award,” presented at the Massachusetts State House in Boston. We are proud to be among the many wonderful advocates for arts education to be honored during this event. […]

Our host Christopher O’Riley has recently offered a series of recitals with longtime collaborator New York Philharmonic cellist Carter Brey. After taping From the Top shows in Cedar Rapids, IA and Omaha, NE last week, Chris flew to New Lebanon, New York to open the Tannery Pond concert season on Sunday afternoon. Vivien Schweitzer reviewed […]

ArtsJournal.com blogger Lee Rosenbaum has posted First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech at yesterday’s ribbon cutting for the new American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts in New York. Among her remarks in support of providing access to the arts for all Americans, Mrs. Obama said: The President and I want to ensure that […]

Two years ago, From the Top visited Chandler Music Hall in Randolph, Vermont to tape a national radio broadcast. We had a wonderful experience exploring the town and even lightheartedly poking fun of the locals by staging a Vermont fashion show with Vermont perfomer Thea Talento. It looks like our visit made an impression with […]

From the Top at Carnegie Hall has received five Daytime Entertainment Emmy® Awards for its second season on PBS, the series has earned a total of eight nominations since it debuted in 2007. Nominations were in the following categories for Season 2: Outstanding Children’s Series, Outstanding Directing in a Children’s Series (Gary Halvorson), Outstanding Achievement […]

Earlier this week, Dr. Jose Abreu, the founder of Venezuela’s national youth orchestra program known as “El Sistema”, was announced as a recipient of Sweden’s Polar Music Prize. If you haven’t heard about the amazing work that Dr. Abreu has done in fostering a thriving network of youth orchestras throughout Venezuela, we’ll try to briefly […]

From the Top Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Clifton Williams will appear on this week’s national broadcast of From the Top on NPR and is featured in today’s Washington Post. Clifton, a 17-year-old pianist from Washington, DC is among the 100 recipients who have received a $10,000 award through a partnership between From the Top […]

From the Top alumni, Rainer Crosett, a 16-year-old cellist from Andover, MA and Julia Glenn, a 19-year-old violinist currently studying at Harvard University, visited the Whelan Elementary School in Revere, MA on April 15, where they performed for the entire 3rd grade in the school library. Rainer and Julia talked about their instruments, had the […]

Like many, we were moved by the story in the New York Times last week about Newark, Ohio senior Tiffany Clay. We’ve heard that the Newark and surrounding communities have come together to raise funds to help Tiffany continue her music and academic studies and to support the efforts of the Newark High School Orchestra. […]

This month, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a dozen Chicago-based music education organizations launched a new initiative to encourage youth engagement in music with the  “Chicago Festival of Youth in Music.” Percussionist and From the Top alum Joshua Jones (pictured) was among the hundreds of participants. He writes: “I had the privilege of performing in […]

Caeli Smith reports on the upcoming YouTube Symphony event on April 12-15 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Learn more about the project on Caeli’s vlog.

Piano teacher Adrienne McKinney of Lexington, KY posted a comment to Greg Sandow’s blog that has generated some great ideas about how to bridge the gap between classical and not-classical music – inviting music students to bring in their favorite tunes for reworking or improvisation, giving them the vocabulary to communicate about what music means […]

An interesting article from England about the state of music education appeared in The Guardian last week. How are schools in your part of the world promoting music education? What can we do better? At From the Top, we have been working in three Boston Public Schools for the past two years through a generous […]

On Friday March 27, From the Top was featured during the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Arts Council Meeting. From the Top CEO Jerry Slavet remarked that it was an exciting opportunity to speak  with the NEA leadership body about From the Top’s public broadcasts, education outreach, and scholarship program. “The early vote […]

This Friday, our venerable host launches a new and innovative concert series at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. Chris’ three-part recital series will bring him back to the stage where he performed his groundbreaking Radiohead Transcriptions in 2002. The new series entitled 2+2=5 draws connections between the music of Radiohead, Nick Drake and Elliott Smith with […]

By Caeli Smith, Roving Reporter Hi everyone! One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from the other side of the globe. In the words of Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali mystic, “Music fills the infinite between two souls.” A person who lives half the world away can seem infinitely far from you, but music brings people […]

Portland’s KGW Channel 8 News recently featured a segment about From the Top alum and violist Griffin Gaffney’s free lesson program. Click here to check it out!