Caroline Goulding
Teenage violinist Caroline Goulding is well on her way to fulfilling the destiny confidently predicted for her by Geoffrey Fushi, Chairman of the Stradivari Society. “Caroline Goulding is a brilliant talent,” he asserted. “One who is destined for greatness.” Only fifteen, Caroline has appeared with a roster of orchestras that many artists twice her age might envy. These include the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, the Aspen Music Festival’s Concert Orchestra, Sinfonia Gulfcoast, Red {an orchestra}, The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra, the Lakeside Symphony Orchestra, and the International Symphony Orchestra. Word of the young virtuoso is spreading accelerando. On the musical horizon are performances with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra; Red {an orchestra} in Cleveland, Ohio; The Lexington Bach Festival Orchestra in Lexington, Michigan; Sinfonia Gulf Coast in Destin, Florida; the Louisville Youth Orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky; and the Atlantic Classical Orchestra in Vero Beach, Florida. In 2008-2009, Caroline will collaborate with cellist Umberto Clerici in recital, as well as acclaimed pianists Anton Nel, and Christopher O’Riley. After appearing on such programs as The Today Show and Martha, Caroline’s artistry has captivated audiences nationwide. A performance on PBS’s From the Top Live from Carnegie Hall with virtuoso banjo player Bela Fleck garnered such rave reviews that NPR’s From the Top featured her in a second program, a performance of Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, op. 8 with violoncellist Alina Lim and pianist Si Jing Ye, recorded this past summer at Harris Concert Hall in Aspen, Colorado.

Musical experts and professionals are as impressed by Caroline as her audiences. She won the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra’s Concerto Competition performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in 2007. Cleveland’s Plain Dealer Music Critic Donald Rosenberg said of Caroline’s performance, “Many of the most phenomenal sounds came from a diminutive 14-year-old with a massive talent. Caroline Goulding played the Tchaikovsky Concerto as if she’d been living with the piece her entire, short life.” In April 2007, Caroline was one of only 10 musicians world-wide selected to take part in the Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at the renowned Juilliard School. This was the second time she was chosen to participate as a Young Artist at the semi-annual Symposium held in New York City. In 2006, Caroline won First Place at the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Concerto Competition performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Of her performance with the Aspen Concert Orchestra conducted by Peter Oundjian, music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Alan Fletcher, President and CEO of the festival, declared, “Here was freshness, confidence, radiant technique and perfect optimism wrapped in sparkling beauty.” What is especially noteworthy about this honor is that Caroline was only thirteen years old at the time. Caroline began studying the violin when she was three years old, under the tutelage of Julia Kurtyka in Port Huron, Michigan. Since that time, she relocated from Michigan to Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to study with the renowned pedagogue Paul Kantor at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In addition to the Aspen Music Festival and School and the Starling-Delay Symposium, the promising young violinist has attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts and The Ceilidh Trail School of Celtic Music on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Caroline Goulding plays the 1617 Lobkowicz A&H Amati, made possible through the generous efforts of The Stradivari Society of Chicago.

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.” His first recording of Radiohead transcriptions, True Love Waits (Sony/Odyssey) was as critically acclaimed as it was commercially successful. His second set entitled Hold Me to This: Christopher O’Riley Plays Radiohead, was released on World Village/Harmonia Mundi in the Spring of 2005. In 2006, he released his third set of transcriptions Home to Oblivion; An Elliott Smith Tribute. His most recent CD, Second Grace: Music of Nick Drake, interprets the work of singer/songwriter Nick Drake.

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 has developed programs with fellow pianists: Heard Fresh: Music for Two Pianos, with the jazz pianist Fred Hersch; and Los Tangueros, with Argentine pianist Pablo Ziegler, a program of two-piano arrangements of Astor Piazzolla’s classic tangos. Next season he will play a series of recitals that intertwine his own piano transcriptions with classical compositions. These will debut at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre and feature Claude Debussy/Nick Drake; Robert Schumann/Elliott Smith and Dimitri Shostakovich/Radiohead.

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