FOLLOW UP ON YOUNG ARTIST'S COMPETITION WINNERS

Journey Son -- a 2004 Lewisville Lake Symphony Young Artist Grand Prize Winner

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Local teens shine on 'From the Top'

07:13 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 31, 2004

By NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News

The sold-out crowd was torn during the live taping of From the Top at Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch on Saturday night. The audience got happier as host Christopher O'Riley got closer to the Texas talent: 18-year-old cellist Journey Son from Carrollton and the two-time Grammy award-winning Texas Boys Choir.

But the finale also meant the end of the show – and no one was in a hurry to hear the last notes of this dazzling program.

The syndicated program From the Top, the No. 1 classical music program on radio, is the star of the nonprofit organization of the same name that celebrates young musicians.

The show, carried by nearly 250 stations, is a marvelous mix of difficult things that goes down easy. It's a showcase for the best young classical talent in the country – all of the performers are in their pre-college years. Thanks to the smooth deadpan of Mr. O'Riley, a pianist who accompanies many of the young artists and quizzes them afterward, it's also a lot of fun.

Where else would anyone follow up Ms. Son's stirring performance of Hungarian Rhapsody, Op. 68, with a discussion of how she got her name (she said she couldn't pronounce her given Korean name) and details on her obsession with shopping and fast food... (Her boyfriend, who was in the audience, works at Sonic.)

The interviews that followed each performance included lots of "awesomes" and "totallys." Playing marimba (the sides and pipes as well as the keys), the Illinois-based Rattan Trio (Molly Yeh, 15 and still in braces; Stefani Weiss, 16 and Michael Drake, 18) gave a hypnotic rendition of Mark Ford's Stubernic. Afterward, they teamed up to give Mr. O'Riley a hard time about his social life – quizzing him to see if he qualified for a date with a music teacher.

The internationally acclaimed Texas Boys Choir, which will perform Nov. 12 at Texas Christian University (www.texasboyschoir .org), wowed the crowd with Sensemaya. The 34 members on stage, ages 11-18, showed off their virtuosity and vocal range, stabbing at the staccato notes with laser precision and power.

After a sketch in which three members faced off in a comically unfair quiz competition against 18-year-old mezzo-soprano Johanna Bronk of Newton, Mass., they cried foul and demanded the right to give another performance.

Mr. O'Riley consented happily. Three other members of the Texas Boys Choir came out. Together, the group is the sextet the Enharmonics, and the audience, otherwise scrupulous about keeping still during the musical numbers, couldn't help laughing loudly as the group mugged shamelessly during the performance.

The show airs Saturdays at 9 a.m. on WRR-FM (101.1). This particular show will air Oct. 30.

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