Show 184 | Aspen, Colorado

From the Aspen Music Festival and School in Aspen, Colorado, a gifted flutist embraces a Swiss ballade, a 16-year-old violinist tosses off a devilish sonata, and a 14-year-old pianist tackles Liszt's Mephisto Waltz.

Pianist Colton Peltier, 14, from Hastings, Minnesota, comes from a family of high achievers -- not musically, but athletically. His dad was a Major League baseball player and his mom was a champion swimmer. His siblings, too, excel at all sorts of sports.

"You might say I'm the rebel of the family," says Colton with a grin.

Colton's parents enrolled him in Kindermusik when he was two years old, but he had a tendency to be naughty, so his teacher told Colton's parents that he'd never take to music.

Colton proved his teacher to be overwhelmingly wrong.

At the age of nine, he became the youngest person ever to solo with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Since then, Colton has had numerous professional engagements and has won several competitions, such as the Minnesota Idol Competition (a piano competition where the audience votes, American Idol-style).

He performs Franz Liszt 's Mephisto Waltz No. 1.

16-year-old Ga-Yeon Lee from Englewood, New Jersey knew she wanted to play violin when she was three years old.

"I saw an orchestra commercial on TV and kept pointing to the violin, asking my parents if I could have one," she recalls.

Ga-Yeon got her first violin a year later, but when she passed her bow over the strings, no sound came out. She and her parents thought the instrument was defective -- until they realized that they had forgotten to put rosin on the bow hair.

Ga-Yeon's parents have been extremely supportive of her musical interests, going so far as to move from Korea to America so she could further her violin studies. Music is unquestionably Ga-Yeon's greatest passion and she loves performing for an audience.

"It's really fun to communicate with people through music," she says. "It's like sharing a different story every time I play."

Ga-Yeon performs Giuseppe Tartini's Violin Sonata in G Minor, known as the "Devil's Trill," in an arrangement by Fritz Kreisler , accompanied by Christopher O'Riley.

18-year-old flutist Doug DeVries from Stevenson Ranch, California played piano as a child, but when he joined the school band he was hoping to take up the saxophone.

"Unfortunately everyone else in the seventh grade wanted to play sax too," he says.

Instead, the band teacher handed him a trumpet, but Doug discovered that playing the trumpet with braces on his teeth was just too painful. He switched to the euphonium, an instrument with bigger mouthpiece, but it was still too uncomfortable to be enjoyable.

He was about to give up when fate intervened.

"During Christmas break I was up in the attic getting stuff to decorate the tree and there it was," he recalls. "My mom's old flute!" He tried it out and found he was able to produce a good sound almost immediately. Doug knew he had found the right instrument and soon started taking flute lessons with Cathy Karoly of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Doug is a recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award. He plays "Ballade," by Frank Martin, accompanied by Christopher O'Riley.

Eighteen-year-old soprano Julia Metzler from Glendale, California, comes from a musical family, but she still found a way to break the mold. Her parents run a violin shop, play violin themselves, and encouraged Julia to take it up too.

"I started playing the violin when I was four," says Julia, "but I made it clear from the very beginning that I didn't want to do so professionally."

At age 13, Julia discovered singing, and was delighted to apply the musical skills she'd acquired playing the violin to her newfound discipline.

She performs "Que fais-tu, blanche tourterelle" from Romeo et Juliette, by Charles Gounod, accompanied by Christopher O'Riley.

The final performance on this week's program comes from four talented musicians from the Aspen Music School who got together to play a Mozart oboe quartet. They are oboist Beverly Wang, 17, from Toronto, Canada; violinist Mikaela Holland, 16, from Scottsdale, Arizona; violist Meredith Treaster, 17, from Tesuque, New Mexico; and another Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award recipient, cellist Emma Bobbs, 17, from Pepper Pike, Ohio. This was the first time any of them had ever played an oboe quartet.

"I'm used to woodwind quintets," says Beverly, "so playing chamber music with stringed instruments is a really cool feeling for me."

The ensemble performs the first movement from Oboe Quartet in F major, K.370 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.