Learn Your Lessons Well

For Paul Shaffer, the piano lessons he started as a six-year-old in Thunder Bay, Ontario, certainly paid off. He went on to some terrific gigs - among them, five years in the Saturday Night Live house band and musical director for David Letterman since 1982. The life and career of this musician, composer, producer, and author are chronicled in his 2009 memoir, We'll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives: A Swingin' Showbiz Saga. Paul is the recipient of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor.

The DiGiallonardo Sisters - Daniela, Nadia, and Christine - started singing together when they were kids Brooklyn. They still call Brooklyn home, and they still love stacking up those three-part harmonies. Now, Daniela teaches social studies at Brooklyn's Mark Twain Intermediate School for the Gifted & Talented; Nadia is a pianist, composer, arranger, and singer; and Christine is a singer and actor. The trio's debut album, Shout Sister Shout, was recorded with Rob Fisher live at the Virginia Arts Festival.

Soprano Ellie Dehn has appeared in many of the world's leading opera houses, from the Metropolitan Opera to Teatro alla Scala and Bayerische Staatsoper. But her love of music started during her childhood in Anoka, Minnesota. She was raised in a musical home - the granddaughter of a Minnesota Orchestra flutist and the daughter of a piano teacher - and she went on to study at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.

Richard Kriehn, Dean Magraw, Jeff Carney, and Ray Marchica