Ethan Bortnick, the child prodigy who’s already amazed Oprah and Jay Leno, is now off to his first concert tour in Naperville.
The 10-year-old piano virtuoso performs “Ethan Bortnick and His Musical Time Machine” on January 14 (Friday) at North Central College. The show pays homage to musical classics from every era — from 1920s ragtime to early ’50s rock and roll to the pop hits of today, with a smattering of Bach, Mozart and jazz thrown in.
| Ethan Bortnick and His Musical Time Machine will be at North Central College in Naperville. |
He is the youngest performer to headline his own tour, the youngest musician to have his own nationally televised PBS concert special, the youngest performer on the recent re-recording of “We Are the World,” and he’s raised record amounts of money for charities. His first CD/DVD, “Ethan Bortnick and His Musical Time Machine,” was released in October.
All of this, and he hasn’t even lost all of his baby teeth.
Bortnick started his musical career banging out the tunes he heard on his Baby Einstein CDs on his toy piano.
“I wanted piano lessons, but my parents were like, ‘No, you’re still in diapers,’” Bortnick said in a telephone interview. “I listened to my Baby Einstein CDs and with my little keyboard I started playing the same thing. And finally they said, ‘OK, now you can have piano lessons.”
He had his first lesson at the age of 4. The first song he learned to play was Mozart’s “Alla Turka” — no “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for him. By age 5, he was writing his own compositions.
He made his concert stage debut in May 2007 opening for Nelly Furtado after meeting her on the set of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Since then, he has taken the stage with the Orlando and Naples Philharmonic Orchestras, making him the youngest piano soloist to perform with these ensembles.
