Johannes Gray takes it ‘From the Top’

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Wilmette cellist Johannes Gray rehearses with "From the Top" host and pianist Christopher O'Riley, in preparation for his performance on the nationally-aired NPR radio show.

Updated: March 11, 2012 8:23AM

Johannes Gray loves the sound of the cello. The Wilmette 14-year-old, a freshman at New Trier High School, describes its tone as deep and rich. It’s a tone he has worked to create — with notable success — since he was a toddler.

Now people across the country will get the chance to hear Gray perform with the instrument he loves when he appears on an episode of “From the Top,” the popular National Public Radio program that features young American classical musicians. The episode airs at 7 p.m. Feb. 12 on Chicago’s WFMT-FM 98.7 classical radio station.

Gray will perform Lukas Foss’s “Capriccio” in a show that also will feature two teenage Chicago percussionists, a 17-year-old tuba player from Rochester, Ill., and a young pianist from Michigan.

Recording the show last month with host and pianist Christopher O’Riley in Kalamazoo, Mich., “was a really fun experience, and I’m really glad I did it,” Gray said Monday.

“Everyone involved was really great with working with kids and having fun, too. They made you feel professional, but at the same time they had fun with you,” Gray said. “And meeting the other kids was fun, too. I met a tuba player for the first time, and the percussion players were cool.”

Gray’s enthusiasm isn’t that of a performing newcomer. Not only has he played cello since he first tried it at the age of two and a half, he also has built a steadily expanding resume, studying with top instructors (including master classes with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, David Finckel and Ralph Kirschbaum).

Along the way, he has won plaudits and awards at national and international competitions, taking first prize in the 2011 Crain-Maling Foundation Chicago Symphony Orchestra Youth Auditions and winning a performance with the orchestra.

He’s an active member of the Music Institute of Chicago’s pre-collegiate academy program, where he holds the 2012 Betsey and John Puth Academy Fellowship, taking part in music theory and master classes, as well as chamber music and orchestral performances.

For the past 11 years, he has studied with the institute’s faculty members Hans Jorgen Jensen and Gilda Barston.

His daily schedule includes practice time of anywhere between two and six hours, and he has performed solo and in different groups at Ravinia, Symphony Center’s Orchestra Hall and elsewhere.

But both the performance schedule and the dedicated study and rehearsal time are labors of love that come naturally to Gray, the son of Brigitte and Tad Gray.

He was born into a musical family — his mother plays viola; older sisters Ingrid and Erika play viola and violin, respectively; and, he jokes, his dad is the “odd one out” who plays clarinet. The family has performed biannual house concerts for friends and area residents as the string quartet, and string and woodwind quintet the Shades of Gray, every since Gray was 3. He and his family also have played together with extended family in Switzerland who share their musical traditions.

“Sometimes it can be a little more challenging (to play with family) because we sometimes start arguing about pieces,” he joked. “But I really like it.”

Gray’s personal tastes run to chamber music and, for solo performances, pieces by Johannes Brahms (“his pieces are nice and warm, and besides, we share the same name.”), but he likes being challenged by composers like Mstislav Rostropovich – who was a cellist himself, Gray noted.

Gray’s life also includes reading (novelist Michael Crichton is a favorite), his cat Athena, and enjoying his academic courses at New Trier, especially his Latin and science classes. He would love to have a bird, and has fostered a parakeet in the past. He knows music will be his future, although he has not yet decided whether to study at a university or a dedicated music conservatory.

“I have time to make that decision. Right now, I’m enjoying school, and studying and playing,” he said.

For more information on “From the Top” and the Feb. 12 airing of Gray’s performance, visit www.fromthetop.org.