From the Top showcases pre-collegiate musicians whose stunning individual performances are combined with lively interviews, unique pre-produced segments, lighthearted sketches and musical games. The series captures live on tape performances originating from some of the nation’s finest concert halls, in addition to interviews with such high-profile performers as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Bobby McFerrin.

Meet the Host:
As host of the most popular classical music radio show on the air today, From the Top (nationally distributed on National Public Radio), Mr. 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. An interpreter and arranger of some of the most important contemporary rock music of our time, Chris lives by the Duke Ellington adage, "there are only two kinds of music, good music and bad." His first recording of Radiohead transcriptions, "True Love Waits" (Sony/Odyssey) received 4 stars from Rolling Stone and was as critically acclaimed as it was commercially successful. His second set of music from the British alt-pop outfit, entitled "Hold Me to This: Christopher O'Riley plays the music of Radiohead," will be released on World Village/Harmonia Mundi in the Spring of 2005.