Biography

Ethmer Roten began studying clarinet at the age of 10 in Oklahoma. After his family moved to California, Ethmer pursued his musical studies on clarinet, then saxophone, and finally on flute. He began his performing career at age 14 at Lincoln High School n the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he played in a jazz band and in the school orchestra. He was eventually selected to play in the All City Band. With these experiences behind him, he went on the road with big bands, and then into the U.S. Army Air Force Orchestra in Santa Ana, California. As a member of the U.S. Army Air Force Orchestra, he performed in coast-to-coast radio shows and recorded educational and recruitment programs to audiences in the U.S. and abroad.

In 1946, Ethmer became a contract recording musician at Universal Studios, where he was the featured flute soloist in hundreds of major motion pictures, performing the music of Frank Skinner, Henry Mancini, Miklos Rozsa, Hans Salter, Herman Stein, Irving Gertz, and many others. Some of the movies he played in include The Glenn Miller Story, The Benny Goodman Story, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Spartacus, Dr. Zhivago, and the remake of Fantasia. Ethmer has long been considered one of the top studio musicians, and he has been a freelance musician for all major studios in Hollywood, working on over 650 motion pictures. Ethmer also worked on ore than 500 television episodes, and his flute playing is prominently featured in the Lassie TV series and the miniseries The Thorn Birds.

He has accompanied or recorded with vocalists including Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Lena Home, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Mel Torme, Debbie Reynolds, Perry Como, Nancy Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Bernadette Peters, and classically with Mario Lanza and Jan Pierce. Ethmer performed on almost all of Henry Mancini's many recordings.

Ethmer has worked in many genres of music including The Academy Awards Orchestra, Civic Light Opera, community symphony orchestras, church choirs, and live dance bands, and he continues to perform in a Big Band to the present (2016). He has been a featured saxophonist with David Rose, Gordon Jenkins, John Williams, Quincy Jones, and Les Brown.

Throughout his life, Ethmer Roten has loved to teach, because after all, it was his high school band teacher that inspired him to be a musician in the first place.
- IMDb mini biography by: David Schecter