Christopher O'Riley Photo Credit-2005 John Best

From The Top
Sunday Noon

From the Top, with host Christopher O'Riley, is a weekly radio series that showcases the nation's most outstanding young classical musicians. Each one-hour program presents pre-collegiate musicians whose stunning individual performances are combined with lively interviews, unique pre-produced segments, lighthearted sketches and musical games.

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Host Christopher O'Riley
From his groundbreaking transcriptions of Radiohead to his unforgettable interpretations of classic and new repertoire, pianist Christopher O'Riley has redefined the possibilities of classical music.

As host of From the Top, O'Riley works and performs with the next generation of brilliant young musicians, demonstrating to audiences, with humor and a lack of pretension, that these young artists are no different than any other child. In 2007, his successful run as host of From the Top was marked by the debut of the PBS television series From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall.

An interpreter and arranger of some of the most important contemporary rock music of our time, O'Riley lives by the Duke Ellington adage, "there are only two kinds of music, good music and bad." O'Riley has been honored with many awards at the Leeds, Van Cliburn, Busoni and Montreal competitions, as well as an Avery Fisher Career Grant. He toured the U.S. with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Orchestra playing Bach, Mozart and Lizst concerti, and has recently appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

O'Riley studied with Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory of Music, and splits his time between Los Angeles and Ohio.

URL: http://www.fromthetop.org/