German-American violinist David Garrett played an impressive show at downtown San Diego’s Balboa Theatre.
I first heard of German-American violinist David Garrett a few years ago, after he made worldwide headlines for falling down a concrete flight of stairs after a holiday concert in London. Thankfully he was uninjured, minus a few scrapes and bruises. His violin, however, was not. He landed on his violin case and when he opened it, his Guadagnini, crafted in 1772, lie in pieces. He pronounced it “a mess.”
The prescription? Eight months in the repair shop, but Garrett needed his violin back sooner than that. He had another concert date in London, on Valentine’s Day. In a too-good-to-be-true twist of fate, Garrett received a Stradivarius to play days before the show, flown in special from Milan. He has played a 1710 Stradivarius ever since.
LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Roll over Beethoven, there’s a new kid in town. He’s 9 years old and calling him a prodigy wouldn’t do him justice. He is a young pianist and composer who already has his own Web site and his own legion of fans.
If you give Ethan Bortnick a microphone, he’ll entertain you. But if you give him a piano, he’ll take your breath away. Ethan is a nine-year-old musical phenomenon from Florida. He is a third grader whose fingers fell in love with a toy piano when he was just four-years-old.
“I was just begging my parents for piano lessons and they kept saying, ‘No, you’re still in diapers,'” explained Ethan.
“He was asking us a lot and we sort of ignored it,” said Gene Bortnick, Ethan’s Dad. “One day I just heard a Mozart piece and I just started playing it,” said Ethan. “All of a sudden, I heard him in the living room playing a little keyboard with five keys on it and we were like, ‘What was that?'” said Gene.
Ethan doesn’t just play music. He also composes it. It’s not very often a nine-year-old gets to play at concert halls, especially one at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles but that’s no big deal for Ethan. He’s used to playing at some pretty spectacular places with some pretty names.
“Barbara Streisand, Celine Deon, Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers,” said Ethan as he listed the names of musicians he performed with before. “But we still need to stay humble.”
And Ethan has plenty of people helping him stay humble, including his Dad.
“No one knows me by my name anymore. It’s Ethan’s Dad or, ‘Aren’t you Ethan’s Dad?'” said Gene.
Even Ethan’s four-year-old brother Nathan is getting into the act as he performs on stage looking more interested in cutting a rug than tickling the ivories. That’s best left to Ethan, the boy with a big smile and the even bigger talent who likes one thing more than playing piano.
“I just like to make people happy,” said Ethan. That is a mission accomplished by an accomplished musician.
BUFFALO (WNED) – It’s been 15 years since Dr. John Gray wrote his way to the top of the bestseller lists with “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.” His thoughts on marital relationships struck a chord with couples across America. The success allowed Gray to expand his work, which now offers physiological insights into the marital roles of men and women.
Dealing with stress, according to Gray, is a major obstacle to family harmony. He cites research focusing on “hormonal stress levels” which shows how men and women physically react to daily stress. Dr. John Gray will be in the WNED studios tonight for the airing of his latest project, “Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice,” at 8pm on WNED-TV.
WNED’s Jim Ranney discussed the project with Dr. Gray. Click here to hear that conversation.
“I BELIEVE” SOARS TO #1 ON THE iTunes® TOP SONGS CHART
Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company, is pleased to announce the debut studio release of Montreal vocal sensation Nikki Yanofsky titled, Nikki on April 27th (Decca / Universal Music Canada).
“It is once in a lifetime that a talent like Nikki Yanofsky comes singing along and her arrival is about to set the music world alight,” commented Randy Lennox, President and CEO, Universal Music Canada. “While “I Believe” has made Nikki an instant household name and a new voice of our nation, her debut album is certain to garner her international acclaim.”
Nikki was produced by 15-time Grammy-winning producer Phil Ramone (Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Burt Bacharach, Paul Simon) and Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Jesse Harris (best known for his work on Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me and Feels Like Home).
Nikki is a collection of newly arranged standards and elegant originals Yanofsky co-wrote with Harris and Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith that reflects her love for jazz, blues, R&B, soul, and traditional pop vocal styles. A composition written for Yanofsky by acclaimed Canadian songstress Feist (“Try, Try, Try”) will also appear on the album.
Nikki features classic selections from the American Songbook including “I Got Rhythm”, “God Bless The Child” and “Over the Rainbow” as well as original compositions that Yanofsky co-wrote including, “For Another Day”, “Never Make It On Time”, “Bienvenue Dans Ma Vie,” and the soulful, R&B-flavoured “Cool My Heels”.
Hot on the heels of her 16th birthday this week, Yanofsky is taking the world by storm with her smash hit single and CTV’s Official song for the Olympic Games, “I Believe” topping the iTunes® Top Songs Chart. Yanofsky’s climb to the top officially marks the vocal prodigy’s first #1 hit single. “I Believe” – CTV’s Official song for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games – was written by award winning composer, Stephan Moccio and Canadian music maverick Alan Frew.
The video for “I Believe” premiered during the 2010 Super Bowl halftime show on CTV this past weekend, bringing the song into millions of Canadian homes nationwide. It has also been making waves and just crowned “The Big One” on MuchMusic and “Choice Cut” on MuchMoreMusic. View the video on the CTV website here.
Yanofsky and Moccio will perform “I Believe” for the first time LIVE on CTV’s Olympic Morning direct from the International Broadcast Centre in Vancouver this Saturday (February 13).
Nine -year-old Ethan Bortnick’s parents had already noticed that their son was gifted (he’d picked up reading by age 2), but they first realized they had a prodigy on their hands when they overheard Ethan, then 4, using his toy keyboard to repeat every song on his Baby Einstein albums. “We pretty much flipped out,” says Ethan’s dad Gene Bortnick. “We’re not musicians at all. There was no piano in the house.
That’s when the whirlwind began that would find Ethan, two years later, as a guest on The Jay Leno Show. He charmed the talk show host — and everyone who tuned in that evening — with not only a medley of complex piano pieces but also his precocious personality, and in short succession, Leno invited Ethan back three more times. He’s since been on air with nearly every the major television personality (including the likes of Oprah and Martha Stewart) and opened up for artists such as Beyoncé and Josh Groban.
“When Ethan’s on-stage, he has this spark,” explains Gene. “When he’s off-stage, and he’s playing video games, he has that same spark. Like today, he just could not wait to get to school this morning. He has that spark. When he’s eating good food, he has that spark. I think he just enjoys everything. What we try to do is just balance everything. I think that’s why the spark is still there.”
Most recently, Ethan was invited to be a part of the monumental “We are the World” for Haiti recording (see video below) and to join the Baldwin Piano family. In fact, the elementary school student gets to travel in style during his upcoming headlining tour on the Gibson/Baldwin tour bus. “I showed him the pictures [of the bus] and he said, ‘Oh this is where I can play my video games,’” says Gene. “And I said, ‘It’s where you can do your homework, too.’”
After a piano rehearsal last week, we chatted with Ethan about his experience with “We are the World,” his tour and what he wants to be when he grows up.
How did you first get into playing piano?
I was begging my parents for piano lessons, and they kept saying, “No, no you’re still in diapers.” So I said, “OK, fine.” You know those Baby EinsteinCDs? I was constantly listening to them and I had a little Elmo toy keyboard and just one day I started mimicking the Baby Einstein CDs. And my parents said, “OK, now you can have piano lessons.”
What kind of things do you like to write songs about?
Well, I like animals so I like to write about animals mostly. Like one of my songs is called “Arctic Jazz.” It’s about a manatee who went all the way from Florida to Antarctica. It’s called “Arctic Jazz” because he’s going to Antarctica to have a jazz party. Why I wrote this song is because if you keep trying and trying you’ll be the best at what you do. And for a manatee, it’s so hard for him to go from Florida to Antarctica to have a jazz party, but he just kept trying and trying and he made it. It’s one of my favorite songs that I wrote because I love jazz.
Tell me about your PBS special coming up — you’ve called it Ethan and the Musical Time Machine.
We’re just going to invite a bunch of people to help me do it and everything and we’re going to hang out, just have a lot of fun. We’re going to just play music and travel through time and do a lot of fun things. Or meet Mozart and give him an iPod, stuff like that.
What do you love most about playing piano?
I just love music, and I think music really is amazing because…once, my grandpa told me a story, how one farmer started playing music. Andthe next day, he saw that all the plants were almost done. Because of the music, they were growing faster. I just like making people happy and besides that, it makes me happy, too.
You seem very happy when you’re on-stage performing.
Yeah, I have a lot of fun with the audience. We just schmooze.
You’ve schmoozed with a lot of famous people. Most recently you did the ‘We are the World’ recording.
That was a great recording. I loved it. It was so much fun. It was pretty cool. I mean, it was hot inside and we were on our feet for six hours, but it was still a lot of fun. First people did solo, but I was in the choir with the other people. I was singing. They didn’t have a piano there. I love to sing.
It seems like you get a kick out of helping people who are in need.
Yeah, that’s mostly what I like to do. I like to do charity. First of all it’s just fun for me, and it helps people.
Other than playing piano and performing, what do you like to do?
I like to play video games. I like to play with my brother and cousin. I like to go to school. I like to eat goat cheese salad. I like to do a lot more things — get on the computer. I like to play sports, but especially soccer because it doesn’t include my hands. Because sometimes I can break one of my fingers and that’s not good.
Who are some piano players that you look up to?
Basically all of them, I think. I like Mozart. He’s really good, but he’s not alive anymore. I like Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Elton John. I like everyone.
You’ve already accomplished so much. What do you want to do in your future?
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be a zookeeper, I think. And play music for the animals. That would be really fun. I love animals and I love music, so it includes both things.
The Little Giant Among Giants: Ethan at the 25th anniversary remake of “We Are The World,” which debuted during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics and featured more than 70 performers, including Kanye West, Brian Wilson, Pink and Celine Dion.
Clay Aiken will hit the stage for a special one-night-only concert at the Memorial Auditorium in his hometown ofRaleigh, NC on Friday, March 12. The singer is promising fans an exciting 2010 with this show being just the beginning! The performer extraordinaire is gearing up for the release of his new album, “Clay Aiken: Tried and True.” The event, which will be taped for a television special produced by International Media, is the world premiere live performance of Aiken’s forthcoming album being released on Decca this Spring.
As a special “thank you” to his fans, Clay is giving fan club members the first opportunity to purchase tickets with a special fan club only pre-sale. Beginning Tuesday, Feb 16 at 12PM EST, fan club members will be able to login to www.clayaiken.com and visit the “Appearances” page to pick up their pre-sale code and click through for the opportunity to purchase up to 2 tickets. The fan club pre-sale ends on Thursday, Feb 18 at 10PM EST.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA is a production, marketing and distribution media company specializing in music and self-improvement programs for public television and the international market. The company was founded by Gustavo Sagastume, former Vice President of Programming for PBS, and long time Executive Producer of countless specials with international artists, including DAVID GARRETT, YANNI, ANDRE RIEU, THE GIPSY KINGS, CELTIC THUNDER, ZADE and many others.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA has recently produced MICHAEL BARNARD BECKWITH: THE ANSWER IS YOU, released on PBS in December of 2009, as well as JOHN GRAY: VENUS ON FIRE – MARS ON ICE, DACAPO: SONGS OF DELIGHT and JIMMY STURR AND HIS ORCHESTRA for March 2010 release.
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