Where Have We Been?

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!

March, Interrupted

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.

On rotation: a ramble in the style of Sibelius's 4th Symphony

I had the week off last week! Sort of. Edmonton Opera hired a “reduced” version of the ESO for its recent production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and I was one of the small handful of core players who were rotated off the schedule for the run. Earlier in the season I was in the pit for Verdi's Rigoletto when others had their own turn at time off, and I'll be there again in March for Bernstein's Candide. But the last couple of weeks my wife was booked as a sub to play oboe in Figaro while I stayed home, where I took advantage of my hours of quiet solitude to catch up on some nagging items on that good ol’ to-do list. But there are also three different folders of music on my stand for upcoming programs demanding my attention, so it's not like I wasn't still working for the orchestra. And the quartet I joined this season - fellow members of the ESO - is booked as a guest artist for one of those programs (exciting!) so we had a few rehearsals of our own as well.

I don't quite know what other core members typically do with their odd time off, when it comes midseason without very much notice (I didn't know I wasn't playing the opera until a couple of weeks earlier when the roster was posted).

When I was in a touring string quartet there was no such thing as taking a week off while others in your section played your part in a particular program. It doesn't work that way! Four parts, four people. The common refrain was that our job was actually two or three full time jobs each. Every day was filled with preparing for something else upcoming, whether in rehearsal all together, individual practice, emailing our staff or consultants or recording distributors or teachers, updating the website or our mailing list, making or taking meetings, etc etc. Time off was usually carefully planned months in advance, a week or so squeezed in between concerts and gigs, scheduled to ensure we'd be back at it enough in advance of the next important engagement to be confident in our ability to truly do our best, hopefully without completely burning out from not having had enough time away from each other and the work. But again, inevitably some of the work always came home, or came along in the luggage.

We had incorporated as a nonprofit, with a sizeable board of directors and a staff of several people working for us, and no matter how much - because of how much - they worked to support us, our own supervisory responsibilities were never done; we performers were never off the hook for all of the details, musical or business-ical.

It's one of the weird things I'm still getting used to in this still fresh “second half” of my career, as a quartet-turned-orchestral musician: so much less responsibility for the behind-the-scenes stuff.

As one of many - my team is much larger, now - I find, at least for now, my mind is able to wander more creatively, less desperately, more selfishly, plotting on the side, knowing and trusting that all the various technical issues in the business side at work are truly being handled by not just someone else I might have hired to help me succeed, but a whole trained team of someone elses working full-time with benefits to do so.

So when my mind wanders, relieved from a daily stressing about whether we've got enough concerts next year or whether the last review will be a good one we can quote in our new publicity materials, or whether I'll be apart from my wife on our next anniversary again because we got hired to teach at a festival across the country again… — Nowadays when my mind wanders, ideas come and go; old dreams are recalled, new dreams emerge. To-do lists are born, and grow, and get refined, and on a week off, items start getting checked off. Some bring satisfaction in completion; others bring joy simply in the attempt to begin tackling them.

And then the week is done, the to-do list is (emotionally, if not actually) shelved, and my daily commute to orchestra services recommences. And soon enough those three folders of orchestral music will each get turned in after their final performances, and replaced with more, and my new quartet's guest artist gig will come to pass, and we'll begin learning something new together…and who knows what else lies in store - a happy uncertainty in the land of orchestral tenure.

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In May 2017 I won the audition for Assistant Principal - third chair - in the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony viola section. There's a two-year tenure review process, during which time I was on probation, watched and quarterly-reviewed with feedback on how I was doing well, and how I might improve in my role.

In September 2018 I won the audition for Assistant Principal - second chair - in the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. The ESO's 16-week tenure review process is remarkably short, and you get no official feedback about your work until the announcement is eventually made that you've got it - or you don't. I got it, just two weeks ago now, and it feels good.

When I'd won the ESO audition, the school year had already started and I was already booked for a range of recitals and concerts that season I was able to fit into the KWS schedule, so it didn't make sense to up & move to Edmonton and begin whole hog right away. But I found four chunks of time when I could get away to Alberta to play as a casual musician with the ESO for a week or two at a time, as a sort of series of taste tests before committing my family to the move with me the following summer in advance of my finally beginning the new job in earnest at the start of the 2019-20 season.

The 2018-19 season, then, was not quite half & half between KWS and ESO, and I made sure my time in Kitchener included all the major concerts in the season, thinking that it was a good idea to at least get tenure in one place before leaving for the new gig, even if the new gig might be better, simply because “you never know” how the new place will turn out - and what if I didn't get tenure in Edmonton? I wasn't ready to burn the bridge back to KWS.

The final KWS concert of the season came and with it, my tenure there - and with that, my 12-month leave of absence was approved so I could go and give the ESO a proper go. A bittersweet celebration and farewell among our closest friends followed, and by the end of August, after an epic summer road trip to end all road trips, we were moved into an apartment in the Glenora neighborhood of Edmonton.