Stevenson High School musical talents in demand

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Sixteen-year-old Kelly Talim of Buffalo Grove rehearses Saturday with coach Roland Vamos at Ravinia. | Brian O'Mahoney~for Sun-Times Media

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Updated: March 3, 2012 8:14AM

They are flying back from gigs in New York and Miami; they are on your radio dial; and they are rehearsing at Ravinia Festival every weekend.

They are some of Stevenson High School’s top musicians, and they are getting a lot of attention around Chicagoland.

Kelly Talim, an SHS sophomore, said she has been up in the air for years, ever since she first heard the sound of a violin. Ari and Torrin Bakke and Kevin Xu put their sounds on the airwaves last weekend.

“Where do you want me to begin?” asks Devon Naftzger, a senior, a viola player and, lately, a frequent flier. “This year’s been pretty crazy.”

Playing Carnegie Hall

Naftzger had a packed winter break: 10 days in New York City included two performances at Carnegie Hall, then a week in Miami with 150 of the brightest young musical minds in the nation.

“We were staying right on Miami Beach, which was really nice,” but Naftzger lamented that the group’s hosts, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, did not give them much splurge time. “We weren’t really allowed to go out anywhere.”

Instead, she spent her time working with a quintet, whose members came from around the country, and performing for judges and other musicians. For their final piece, Naftzger arranged songs from Coldplay, Lady Gaga and Journey into a medley for a piano, recorders, harpists and more.

“That was the really difficult part,” she said. “We had to brainstorm a bunch of songs and figure out what keys they were in, or what keys we could play them in.

“We knew our audience wasn’t going to be just the typical classical music crowd.”

Music makes her fly

Talim does not yet have Naftzger’s mileage, but she says that she gets plenty of flight time. Born in Japan, she moved to the United States at age 7; one month before that move, she heard the sound of a violin for the first time.

“It was something that I heard on a CD, and I didn’t really recognize what it was, but I thought it was beautiful,” Talim said. “Apparently, it was the first thing I asked for, ever.

“When I played violin, it was like I could fly.”

That journey has taken her to the Music Institute of Chicago, where this year she became one of six student musicians to earn MIC’s first round of full scholarships. Mark George, MIC’s president, said Talim was one of the sharpest talents at the training center.

“Kelly is an absolutely extraordinary young lady,” whom George said he would place in the top .01 percent of all high school-aged violin players. “A very special student.”

Take to the
airwaves

Xu and his friends, the Bakke brothers, performed Saturday morning on 98.7’s “WFMT Introductions,” a show that gives young Chicago area musicians an opportunity to play for a radio audience. Torrin Bakke, an eighth-grader who plays the clarinet, said he did not know how the trio got themselves into that situation.

“I’m not sure what gave us the idea,” he said, but they sent a demo tape to the station in December. “I think it was our coach’s idea.”

Ari Bakke, a junior who plays the viola, said the day before their performance that they were excited about what might come of it.

“I’m a little bit nervous,” he said. “We’ll just hope for the best.”

Each has a lot in front of them. Talim said she dreams of playing in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s famous building.

“It’s a beautiful hall, great acoustics,” she said.

Naftzger is on a tour of sorts, checking out the 16 colleges she is applying to. And she needs to get back to the prep work for all those auditions.

“I’ve got to get all my college stuff in order,” she said. “I’ve got to prepare for my Juilliard audition.”