the latest
I hope you like the new website design! I’m trying to figure out what to fill these journal pages with. Truthfully, I could write and write and write, let my mind wander and share it with the world - but what’s actually worth sharing? Stay tuned.
Ethan
Dateline: July 7 2019. Teton Village/Jackson Hole WY
One week down, one week to go. This place is great!
We played a July 4 “Patriotic Pops” concert and then two concerts of Carmina Burana (which I was in) and excerpts of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” (which I wasn’t). My delightful seat for the week was at the back of the viola section, which also meant I was directly in front of, and between, the bass drum and snare on my left and the timpani on my right. I’ll just leave that there. ;) But it also meant that directly to my right and just in front was the soprano’s seat for Carmina Burana, which made everything better.
So there has been music, and fireworks
And beautiful views of the valley from my shared housing overlooking it
And old friends
And lots of hiking!
that is all. Looking forward to this week’s program of Sibelius “En Saga,” Brahms “Haydn Variations,” and Rachmaninov 3rd Piano Concerto with Yefim Bronfman. And more hiking.
watch this space!
Dateline: July 1, 2019 Dallas Fort Worth Airport, Gate C27
My connecting flight to Jackson Hole is delayed by an hour or so. I’ll get there eventually. First rehearsal isn’t until tomorrow afternoon, so it’s all good.
We spent the weekend at our friends Elena and Seward’s home in Wellfleet, on the simplest couple of vacation days we have had as a family in a very long time. It was lucky timing for me: I turned 43 on Saturday and was happy to be with family, far from work, and somewhere beautiful and new-to-us for the occasion. New to my family, anyway - I’ve visited before but it’s been a while, and always as part of Quartet touring. This was nice.
Seward taught me how to open clams and shuck oysters, and he took me out for my first-ever real 9-hole game of golf. Distant thunderstorms were threatening enough that the course was almost entirely empty except for us, which made it super-low pressure and we were able to take our sweet time — the rain finally, barely, came but only as we were walking up the hill for our final putts on the 9th hole.
My son got some music composition mentor ship time from Elena and my daughter got to help rake their beach and plant some flowers and go to the market with Elena. Elisabeth got to test out a new synthetic top joint for her oboe (it’s not a keeper) and generally relax.
And there was a canoe and a kayak available for the four of us (plus Barkley) to take out on the pond for a bit each day.
And lots of Yahtzee! was played. Not many Yahtzees were rolled.
And we all drove over to the bayside for the sunset on Saturday, capping off a fantastic birthday of chill.
And then we drove back to Boston Sunday night in order to visit this French horn shop in Jamaica Plain first thing Monday morning, so my son could get a new mouthpiece and a new case and a new mute for the used horn we recently acquired from his teacher’s colleague at Wilfred Laurier. It was fun being a parent in an alien (not a violin maker's shop) music shop where I really know nothing about the stuff on sale - just that much further-removed from my normal work environment… again, it was nice. Niiiice.
And now I’m here in Dallas, halfway (more) to Wyoming for two weeks as an orchestra festival musician. Looking forward to seeing a couple of old friends and meeting new ones. The schedule is relatively light, so I expect there’ll be some hiking happening. What else?
watch this space!
September 20, 2024
I hid these blog posts from the public a while ago, I’m considering re-publishing them again. Does it matter? Do I care? Does anybody read what I’m writing?
If you’re reading this, I guess I’m testing a theory!
Working backwards, here’s the latest:
I’ve been spending time revisiting and sorting through and revising some old and newer arrangements of songs I like and thought would be cool to turn the piano part into a string ensemble, and a few compositions from my University days as well as some more recent experiments. I have working on the cheap using Flat.io web-based notation software my son discovered years ago and I got more and more into when I found myself with occasional free time. It’s pretty good but not as beautiful as Finale or Sibelius might make a score and parts look, but it’s much more affordable for someone like me who’s not so professionally serious about composing. But over the past few years I’ve done a bunch of arranging for my trio, and some for my duo, and I realized I actually have amassed a not inconsequential assortment of pretty fun arrangements and then I thought some of my old experimental stuff might actually be worth cleaning up and sharing. So… Check it out! I’ve added an Arrangements & Compositions page to this website. Some of the stuff has not yet been played by real people, but if anything looks like it might be fun to try, let me know and I’ll send you the full score & parts. Or you can be super generous and actually just order them through the website and encourage me by actually paying for them :)
www.ethanfilner.com/works
But why? Well, I injured my left ring finger in late June so I have not been playing all summer. I tore the tendon near the end of the finger, resulting in what they call Mallet Finger, and existed for the next couple of months with the digit in a cast to keep it straight while the scar tissue formed. Now the cast is off and I’m practicing again but not very much every day yet - it gets sore faster than it should, and I’m working on building up its strength and flexibility, and the callus on the finger pad, which totally disappeared leaving it very tender! (So that’s what most people’s sensation is like on their fingertips! So weird…)
But how? I had been doing some long-needed bathtub re-caulking and despite wearing gloves for most of the process, I managed to get some silicone gunk on my fingertip. I was scrubbing with soap and scratching at it under running water with my other hand’s nails when I somehow twisted it too far, with too much torque, and it snapped — barely hurt, but the sound was awful. Like a bunch of little twigs snapping in your hand as you prep kindling for a campfire. The end of the finger went limp and after a few minutes of freaking out I headed to the nearby hospital where eventually they xrayed it, confirmed the mallet finger (and very slightly broken bone) diagnosis, and sent me home with a temporary splint. A week later I saw an OT who fitted me with a cast I kept dry for the next 8 weeks.
Enough about that. Except that yes I had to cancel some summer gigs - only a few things, but it was a bummer to miss that work and income. And it meant that when we did our road trip to Wyoming for the annual family reunion, I couldn’t do the creek tubing or fishing or swimming I normally would have filled my days with. Instead, I walked longer walks than ever before, with our 9-year old dog Rosie, who we’ve had in our family since August 2023 when another family had to re-home her due to a medical situation within their family overwhelming them, not leaving time or energy or space or money for the dog.
Explaining Rosie makes me realize really how long it’s been since last blogging here, because now I have to explain Sarah, the 10-ish years old German Shepherd we foster-failed with way back at the end of summer/fall 2021, and who we loved dearly until she passed at the end of May 2024. She came to us through the SCARS network we were fostering cats for, as an old calm dog we could try as a first dog in our house to see how the cats did. She was perfect. She was recovering from a giant mammary tumor removal, but then one week into her stay with us she went into labor and had 4 healthy pups! So we raised them until they were ready to adopt out, and by then we couldn’t imagine life without Sarah in our family, so she stayed with us, and made all of us better.
Sarah and Rosie got along great when they were here together, both older ladies, both remarkably calm. Sarah loved to play fetch, Rosie didn’t - but Rosie loved to run randomly all over a park field, Sarah didn’t have any interest in that. Sarah started to slow down last winter and had some limping episodes in early Spring 2024, and we had her on some medications to help with her worsening arthritis. But it was a sudden stop along a group walk in May that was the first sign of something more major; the next day we noticed one of her hind legs was badly swollen, so we took her for an after-hours x-ray, and it was clear on the screen: bone cancer had weakened and broken her foot, and likely already spread elsewhere throughout her body. We took her home and made an appointment for the end of the week with someone to come to our house to put her down in the comfort of her own space. It was awful, it was devastating, it was beautiful, we were all so sad, and we all still miss her so much.
But before then, things were going good. The 23-24 ESO season had just wrapped up, my trio - the High Level Trio: www.highleveltrio.com - had a nice 3-concert series we called HLT & Friends, featuring collaborations with some of our buddies here in town. I’d put on a monthly chamber music jam session - www.chambermusicgym.com - at Felice Cafe with a randomly rotating cast of characters including some colleagues, some students, some amateurs. I don’t think it’ll happen again this year but it was a good effort. Maybe we’ll try it again someday, but for now it’s on hiatus.
Elisabeth’s been super active on the local community league board as the facilities manager, our daughter was finishing grade 11 - grade 12 is now solidly rolling along… Our son had just graduated from McGill and was home for the summer - he’s now down in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on a 5-year PhD program in pure math (!!) and seems to be enjoying the work there so far. The house is still standing, the garden is growing bonkers lush (how many tomatoes is too many? D. None of the above!) We got solar panels installed on the roof, and most of our windows replaced, mostly paid for with help from the government’s 10 year 0% interest ‘greener homes‘ grant and loan program. Our home mortgage renews next spring so we’re starting to get help from a broker looking into options (the rates are more than double now what we have had locked in since 2020), we’ve got a financial planner helping us make the most of what we’ve already got saved and invested, and of what options there are to further invest wisely for all our various versions of the long term… The market’s gone gangbusters since Covid and I don’t think I’ll ever stop kicking myself for not being more on top of it early on, but now things seem to be all in better positions for how we need it to grow.
I’m going to stop there. No need to recap every little detail from the past 3 years. But hey if you’ve read this far I guess you care? ;) We’re basically doing fine. Looking forward to my getting fully back to work.
See you in another 3 years!
In February 2020 I was Thinking Big Thoughts and still writing occasional blog posts here. I was listening to daily podcasts from NYT (the daily) and Vox (today explained) that made it very clear that it was just a matter of time before the new coronavirus spread fully ‘round the world. In March I was enjoying playing Candide in the ESO Opera with my wife. Rehearsals were going well, we finished the second dress and went home, planning for opening night the following day. But then everything stopped - we all know that by now and we all have our own versions of the same story.
15 months later, what’s new?
We bought a house last March/April right as the local version of the pandemic took hold, and moved out of our high-rise apartment.
Our son graduated HS and has just completed his first year of (completely online, from home) studies at McGill.
Tons of outdoor chamber music concerts happened all over Edmonton (and around the world) as we musicians tried to stay active and engaged with our audiences.
The ESO managed to perform a couple months of live concerts in October and November, before everything shut down for the second time over winter.
I made a few video recordings for HASA, the ESO, and myself just for fun, just like so many other musicians looking to stay sane when otherwise locked out of public performance opportunities.
like this one:
and this one:
And these…
and the complete first solo Bach suite in G major, which you have to subscribe to the eso virtual stage series to watch but I also helped make a little mini-promo for it:
And the g major string sextet by Brahms, which is previewed here:
We also recorded three of the four seasons by Vivaldi (couldn’t get spring done because of the COVID-19 lockdown… and Autumn is behind a paywall, I believe…)
Anyway. So now it’s nearly June 2021. Vaccines have been made and distributed and so far seem to be working their magic bit by bit, at least among wealthier nations. Remains to be seen how we figure out how to help the rest of the world before too many viral mutations happen that throw everything back into more chaos…
The summer ahead will include some small chamber outdoor concerts, driving my son to Montreal to move into a studio apartment for his second years, maybe crossing the US border to visit family in Wyoming- if the border restrictions are lifted enough; to allow it…
I know, it all sounds so awesome.
