Ethan Bortnik plays video games and sports like many of his 14-year-old peers in his native Florida.
But not many of those other 14-year-olds can say they spend their weekends playing a piano and singing songs before audiences numbering in the thousands. Or that they appeared on TV with Oprah Winfrey and Jay Leno — when they were 6.
Botnik is a wünderkind in the broadest definition of the word: a piano prodigy who plays Chopin with balletic grace then breaks into an energetic run of a frenetic jazz tune.
He’s a vocalist who writes his own songs and then turns around and does incredible justice to works ripped from the Great American Songbook.
He’s a composer whose keen sense of musical composition leaves audiences gaping in wonder at this boy-man whose resume belies that he’s only in the eighth grade.
“I’m having fun,” Ethan said Monday as he prepared to make his Tucson Symphony Orchestra debut this weekend with two concerts. “That’s the most important thing.”
This is not the first time Ethan has performed in Tucson; he recalls playing a small concert here a few years ago. But this is noteworthy because he is doing two shows; usually he plays one-night stands then it’s off to the next city.
“Not only do I get to do a night show, where most of the audience will be adults, I also get to do on Sunday a matinee show, which I really hope a lot of kids will come,” he said. “I’m really excited to do two shows.”
In addition to his crazy mad musical skills, Ethan also is a philanthropist. He’s raised more than $30 million since he started his career when he was 6; he said his concerts here will benefit the TSO’s education programs and its Young Composers Project.
When he was 11, Ethan embarked on his first national trek, becoming the youngest musician and entertainer with his own headlining tour, making it into the Guinness Book of World Records. His touring is slowed down considerably this year; after Tucson he so far has a break through late September, when he plays a show in Roanoke, Virginia.
Here’s a bit more that we learned about Ethan during our conversation:
School days: He’s enrolled in a private school and “they’ll give me the homework ahead of time if it’s a small trip. If it’s a tour where I’m gone two or three months, the teachers will email me the work and when I get back I’ll do the tests. ... I usually Skype with the teachers quite a lot.”
He loves playing with orchestras: “The music and the feeling. It’s hard to explain because it’s so powerful especially with the orchestra and all these musicians sitting and playing the same piece together. It’s really just awesome. You can’t describe the feeling, you just feel it.”
What we can expect: “It’s all different types of music from classical to jazz to rock and roll to pop to some of my own music. And it’s all going to be arranged for the symphony. And we’re going to have audience interactions where we’ll have the audience involved and we’ll bring some people up on stage. It’s going to be really, really awesome and I really, really can’t wait. I’m actually going to be composing some music on the spot, too. I’m not going to spoil the entire show, even though I already did.”
Birth of a prodigy: “When I was small I would go to Montessori school ... and I would see that the older kids would take piano lessons and I was 3 years old and I was curious what it was like. So I asked my parents if I could take lessons, but ... I was 3 years old so they said, no, you can’t take piano lessons. … I decided I wanted to convince them so I took a little toy keyboard and I started copying all the music I heard on television and on radio and I asked my parents and they said, ‘Alright, we’ll get you piano lessons.’ And that’s how I started.”
Just an everyday kid: “I play video games. I like to play NFL and NBA 2K15 and I also like to play sports and I like to draw and I like to eat. I just do regular kid stuff. … I’m technically still a regular kid on the stage. I’m just doing something that not every kid does.”
And when I’m no longer a kid … : “I guess I just want to keep performing. The most important thing for me is to really continue to perform and use music to help other people and use music to inspire other kids. … You never know if this won’t be fun anymore, but for now and probably the rest of my life it’s fun. But you have to keep the options open.”
