Ava Ordman: a Reflection on the Artist's Visit

Being unapologetic certainly gets easier with age, but I still was incredibly amased at how Ava Ordman was able to embrace difficult conversations and topics with a degree of confidence and compassion that made me want to stay in the Workshop despite how uncomfortable I felt.

One of Ava's more recent albums: "It's about Time". Cover Text: Music for Trombone by Women Composers; Ava Ordman- Trombone; Derek Kealii Polischuk- Piano. The cover is Ava facing the camera while holding a trombone in playing position, against a dark background.

Ava Ordman is often referred to as a champion in opening the performance avenue for brass instruments (and more specifically, trombone) for women. She is worldwide famous as a performer and educator, and her professor bio has a ridiculously long list of achievements and features.

Yet, Ava denies that title of a champion, saying that she simply played trombone because it was one of the things she could do. "I could not play the tuba, so I picked up trombone instead..." Ava mentions that had sports been open for women when she was making career choices, she would have played Basketball. It felt to me that Ava insisted that she played trombone because she enjoyed it, not because she wanted to be the first woman to professionally perform a brass instrument. I think it's amazing that she was able to achieve so much despite all the bushback and challenges she faced in the extremely male-domiated field, and just because she wanted to play the trombone.

There is a lot more that happened during the Workshop, but I'll pause here- I still have trouble processing how I feel and think about what happened. All I can say is that Ava has left a very deep impression on me with her philosophy and public speaking approaches.

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