Ethan Filner, viola

Biography (2023-24 BIO HERE)

Ethan Filner enjoys an active career as performer, teacher, and chamber music coach. Assistant Principal Viola in the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra since 2019 and the founding violist of the Edmonton-based High Level Trio, Ethan previously held the Assistant Principal Viola position in the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and taught viola at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music from 2016-19. From 2001-16 Ethan was the violist of the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet.

Ethan began playing violin at the age of 4 and viola at 15. Through his experiences in the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop, and the SF Conservatory of Music's Prep Division Chamber Music program, Ethan fell in love with the viola's warm sound, deeper voice, and unique role in chamber and orchestral music.

At Indiana University-Bloomington Ethan earned his B.M. with a Minor in Telecommunications, studying viola with Atar Arad and chamber music with the great variety of teachers there, primarily with Rostislav Dubinsky. He received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Music from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, studying viola with Roger Chase and chamber music with members of the Takacs and Endellion String Quartets.

While living in London Ethan became an active member of the Sigma String Quartet, busking and gigging regularly throughout southern England, and quickly found himself in-demand among his eclectic colleagues as a skilled collaborative street performer. This busking experience uniquely complemented his classical studies at Guildhall, highlights of which included membership in the upstart Etive Ensemble touring group, participation in a mixed faculty-student chamber ensemble tour of Finland as guests of the British Embassy, and opportunities to perform in orchestral masterclasses with Sirs Colin Davis and Simon Rattle.

Following Ethan’s appearance on BBC television as a member of a combined GSMD-Paris Conservatoire orchestra performing the Berlioz Requiem in Royal Albert Hall for the 2000 Proms, he returned to the U.S. to pursue his Master’s Degree in Viola Performance with James Dunham at New England Conservatory. In 2001 Ethan interrupted his studies at NEC and left Boston for San Francisco to join the Cypress String Quartet.

Over the next 15 years - until the ensemble’s disbanding at the conclusion of its 20th Anniversary Season in June 2016 - the Cypress String Quartet toured extensively, performing in concert and on the radio throughout the United States and internationally. Engagements ranged over the years from midwestern small town libraries to many of the most renowned American venues like the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Ravinia Festival, and Cal Performances. 

Dedicated advocates for classical chamber music's relevance in contemporary society, Cypress recorded more than 15 critically acclaimed albums, reached over 150,000 students of all ages through innovative educational outreach programs, and commissioned or premiered dozens of new works from some of the most interesting and exciting composers working today, including George Tsontakis, Kevin Puts, Jennifer Higdon, Elena Ruehr, and Philippe Hersant. Learn more about the CSQ at www.cypressquartet.com.

Ethan remains smitten with chamber music; recent notable collaborators since moving from California to Canada with his family in 2016 have included Zuill Bailey and Alfredo Ogayuez Montero at the El Paso Music Festival; Mark Fewer and James Campbell at the Summer Solstice Festival in Edmonton; the Gryphon Trio and its individual members in concerts at the University of Toronto; the Penderecki and Zemlinsky Quartets in concerts in Waterloo and Hamilton, Ontario; Marie Bérard and Aaron Schwebel (concertmasters of the COC and NBoC Orchestras); members of the Edmonton, Toronto, and Kitchener-Waterloo Symphonies; and other music faculty members at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Toronto.

In 2018 Ethan was the featured guest viola soloist in the Hart House Orchestra’s springtime performance of both Arthur Benjamin’s “Fantasy Concerto” for violin and viola, and Strauss’s Don Quixote.  In 2019 Ethan performed a series of “Viola 1919 Centennial” recitals in Toronto (with Jamie Parker), Waterloo (with Beth Ann de Sousa), and central Pennsylvania (with Daniel Immel).

Ethan was granted tenure with the ESO in January 2020. He enjoyed his first performances with a few of his fellow ESO colleagues that season as the new violist of the Polyphonie String Quartet, soon thereafter forming the High Level Trio with Ewald Cheung and Julie Hereish when their other violinist Virginie Gagné resigned from the ESO and moved back to Montreal. He spent most of July 2019 playing in the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole Wyoming.

Ethan lives in west Edmonton with his oboe-playing wife Elisabeth and their daughter Matilda; their older son Sebastian has recently graduated from McGill and moved down to North Carolina where he has embarked on a PhD program in pure math at UNC Chapel Hill.

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