Young cellist hits airwaves

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Johannes Gray

Updated: February 7, 2012 8:22PM

Cellist Johannes Gray, 13, of Wilmette, can be heard at 7 p.m. on Feb. 12 on “From the Top” on 98.7 WFMT. Gray, a student at Wilmette Junior High School, will perform “Capriccio” by Lukes Foss and be accompanied by “From the Top” host Christopher O’Riley on piano. Gray also studies cello at the Music Institute of Chicago and has taken master classes with Yo-Yo Ma, David Finckel and Ralph Kirshbaum, and won a performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra after placing first in the 2011 Crain-Maling Foundation Chicago Symphony Orchestra Youth Auditions. “From the Top” has been a showcase for up and coming young classical musicians for the last 10 years.

Sneaky law prof: Gene W eygandt, of Park Ridge, is playing the manipulative Professor Callahan in the Marriott Theatre production of “Legally Blonde,” about sorority girl Elle Woods, who enrolls in law school to win back the heart of her high school sweetheart who left her for a more serious girl. Callahan picks Elle Woods, along with a handful of other students, to help him with a murder trial. But, the reason he picks her is so he can hit on her. Laura Savage, of Deerfield, is a member of the ensemble cast in the musical. “Legally Blonde” runs through April 1 at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire.

Winning composition: Highland Park student musician Jonas Tarm, who studies with the Music Institute of Chicago’s prestigious academy for gifted pre-college musicians, has won first place in a distinguished, 50-state classical music composition competition, the 24,000-member Music Teachers National Association. Tarm, 18, a senior at Highland Park High School, will go to New York City, where his winning entry, a Latin-tinged chamber work called “Las Ruinas Circulares,” will be performed at MTNA’s annual convention next month. For winning MTNA’s senior division composition contest, Tarm receives $2,000. His piece for violin, piano, cello and flute is a musical interpretation of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges’ story, “The Circular Ruins,” about a man who sets out to dream another human being into existence only to realize that he himself is a figment of someone’s dream.