Daniel Colaner wins Young Artist Award

Daniel Colaner, age 14, is the winner of From the Top’s Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award, a national scholarship of up to $10,000 for extraordinary young musicians. Colaner appears on a broadcast of NPR’s From the Top in early February. The broadcast was taped before a live audience on November 2, 2019, at The Presbyterian Church in Morristown, New Jersey, where he performed “Jupiter” from The Planets by Gustav Holst, arranged by Peter Sykes.

Colaner is one of only twenty young musicians to receive the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award in the 2019–2020 season. Since 2005, From the Top and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation have awarded more than $3 million in scholarships to young musicians from across the United States.

Colaner is a pediatric cancer survivor from Akron, Ohio, who began his study of music at an early age as a means of counteracting potential late effects of the chemotherapy he received as an infant. He currently studies organ with David Higgs of the Eastman School of Music; serves as organ scholar at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio, under Todd Wilson; and is a scholarship student in the pre-college program at Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studies piano with Sean Schulze.

At the age of 12, Colaner had the opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall (piano) and St. Patrick’s Cathedral (organ). These performances were featured on ABC World News Tonight and led to appearances on ABC’s Good Morning America, Harry, and The 700 Club. He recently won first prize and the audience prize in the Sursa American Organ Competition (high school division), Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, and has been a prize winner in the 2018 Steinway Junior Piano Competition in Cleveland and the 2017 American Protégé International Piano Competition. In his spare time, Daniel enjoys reading about technology, repairing computers, swimming, playing tennis, and spending time with his calico cat, Imogene.

Receiving the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award will enable Daniel to purchase a virtual pipe organ for his home. In addition to performing on the broadcast, Daniel’s experience with From the Top included leadership training, career development workshops, and community engagement. From the Top designs these experiences to enrich both personal and artistic growth for all its young musicians.

More details on this episode of From the Top can be found at: https://www.fromthetop.org/show/nprs-from-the-top-morristown-nj-show-377/.