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The Trombone Retreat
The Trombone Retreat
The Resilient Journey of Musician and Educator, Ava Ordman
Nick and Sebastian hang out with Ava Ordman, professor of trombone at Michigan State University and general badass. In our conversation, we delve into the world of music shaped by Ava's experiences. She recounts her struggles with people-pleasing, and the unique challenges of being chosen to perform Donald Erb's trombone concerto. But it goes beyond music; Ava opens up about her personal journey of transformation studying psychology, and how she learned to own her emotions and assert her boundaries. Listen, as Ava shares her wisdom on navigating the complex dynamics of teaching, including the importance of maintaining healthy teacher-student relationships.
As we wrap up, Ava takes us through her journey at Michigan State University, and her decision to retire. Her story is a vivid illustration of the psychology of teaching and the importance of honesty, self-confidence, and setting boundaries. But the central theme in our conversation is the power of relationships - from her relationship with her therapist to her connections in the music world. From the physical to the emotional, from the trials to the triumphs, Ava's story is a testament to the power of resilience, self-discovery, and the pursuit of passion.
Also introducing special features with Patreon: www.patreon.com/tromboneretreat
Learn more about the Trombone Retreat and upcoming festival here: linktr.ee/tromboneretreat
Hosted by Sebastian Vera - @js.vera (insta) and Nick Schwartz - @basstrombone444 (insta)
Produced and edited by Sebastian Vera
Music: Firehorse: Mvt 1 - Trot by Steven Verhelst performed live by Brian Santero, Sebastian Vera and Nick Schwartz
Thank you to our season sponsor Houghton Horns: www.houghtonhorns.com
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Welcome to the Trombone Retreat podcast of the third coast Trombone Retreat. Today on the podcast we talk to Michigan State Professor Eva Ordman. My name is Sebastian Vera and I'm joined as always by Nick Schwartz. Good morning sir, good to mornin, oh, wow. Oh, we're German today. That's German, I think. So I was talking as a German person yesterday actually, and the only thing I know how to say in German is Wo ist die Toiletten or Wo ist die Toilette? I always mix up the last part, that's where is the toilet?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got it I translated for you, thank you, you German explained me.
Speaker 1:Wow. Well, it's a beautiful morning and this talk was really really freaking cool. Eva Ordman has been a professor for a very long time and she's about to retire from Michigan State University. She was Principal Trombone in the Grand Rapids Symphony when she was 19 and played there for 24 years. And just like a fascinating life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say the conversation. We kind of took a left turn and talked about some certain things that, while I consider very related to the Trombone, definitely aren't directly related. I just thought it was interesting conversation, a little unusual for us, I'd say, in a very good way.
Speaker 1:On the Patreon. This month we are starting to invite guest artists to give Trombone tips, which has been very cool. David Bender is this past month talking about soft playing and getting back into shape for the season. We're going to have a lot more guest tips, so subscribe at our Patreon at patreoncom slash trombone retreat.
Speaker 2:And if you like what you're hearing we hope you do and you're not subscribed, you're missing out. You don't want to be behind the times. Right when we release a new episode, you get a little ding on your phone. Helps us, helps you, helps the world.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure it solves the climate crisis. Yeah, is Darfur still a thing? Common cold Is Darfur still a thing? Yikes, I'm actually happy to say we're in the final stages, with production imminent, of my signature mouthpiece line with Houghton Horrance. We've done lots of research and development with various prototypes over the last couple years and it's a modern take on a classic design. It's a unique mouthpiece unlike anything currently on the market. Vibrant response and resonance with depth of sound is the unique part we're chasing. It's come out really beautiful. I'm really excited. So it's available soon at HoughtonHorrancecom. Stay tuned.
Speaker 2:You know, if you get that mouthpiece, you can say JSV is the mouthpiece for me.
Speaker 1:Wow, you just saved us thousands in marketing costs with that amazing slogan.
Speaker 2:Please enjoy this interview with Ava Orton. Please.
Speaker 3:How's my space? Is it okay, it's so dark?
Speaker 1:How does that say it looks lovely, it looks very comfortable and professorly in there.
Speaker 3:Would you rather I have that light on or not?
Speaker 1:It doesn't. Oh, it doesn't matter, you look fantastic.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, right. By the way, Almost 70 coming right up.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Brand new knees, I know.
Speaker 3:It is amazing, like how the hell I never thought I'd make it to 40. And you know it's weird because I cared, but I didn't care as much and now it's like I just want to hang on to every moment, if I can.
Speaker 1:You know it goes so fast when you get it this age. I love that. I'm finding that you are able to like be president and hang on to moments.
Speaker 3:Better. I mean, covid actually helped me slow down and go like, wow, I like my house, I really wanted to get that fireplace. I've got these mantles in my house. It's a 91 year old house. Wow, I've got these mantles with no fireplaces and I thought they were when I bought the house. But there's no chimney. And I kept thinking, oh, someday I'm going to do that and I finally I put a ventless one in because we couldn't figure out a way to vent it. But it's just so nice to have a fireplace.
Speaker 1:Living up there in the winter.
Speaker 3:A bunch of different things, yeah.
Speaker 1:What were your other hobbies during COVID?
Speaker 3:Well, it started out eating.
Speaker 1:That was one of mine.
Speaker 3:Then I had to go on a what do you call it a keto diet and I lost a lot of weight, to the point where I had to make myself eat. Because I got in that zone and I'd never been there before because I'm an eater it's like, oh my God, I better eat something because I'm losing weight too fast. But yeah, for me this whole it was about four years ago when I started having to deal with a bad back where I injured my lip. It all sort of hit me and it was at the same time my mom was at the end of her life and I was picking her up and I've always had a bad back but it would go away after a while. I could sit in a hot tub, I could go to the chiropractor, this and never went away.
Speaker 3:Then the sciatica came after doing mizzat, I mean, it just was like I felt like I got old overnight and now I'm just trying to do everything I can to be mobile, because my big issue is my mom's side are all I'll have osteoarthritis. My dad's side all that heart attacks. Supposedly, at this point my heart's okay, but I just had a knee replaced a few weeks ago and the process you may even hear it in my voice the nurses were giving me medication without food and I have esophagitis from that. So they sent me the emergency room and then they sent me to the cardiologist and there were a couple of the people I met there were incompetent, and I found a really good guy in Grand Rapids and then when I went to see him with all the information, he said well, you know, I don't think I would have sent you to a cardiologist with the information you got from the emergency room because they did a CAT scan, they're looking for clots and stuff and it was the esophagitis that sent me. So it's been a shit show.
Speaker 1:I don't know about you, nick, but all I hear is just a bunch of excuses.
Speaker 3:Trust me, it's trying to do everything I can to. I got the other knee replaced, so hopefully you might have to do it.
Speaker 1:You're a rock star. You're a rock star, are you kidding?
Speaker 3:I just want to have fun. The last you know whatever quarter of my life or whatever it is, because it just went by so fast.
Speaker 2:You know, just to make levity of a heavy situation, I remember when I joined the ballet I was the youngest brass player by 25 years and we were waiting to go in the pit for something and all the other brass players were standing around talking about oh yeah, I got to go in and get this done, I got to get this tweaked. Just looked at, and the principal Tremonus looked at me and goes Nick, when you get older, every conversation turns into an organ recital.
Speaker 3:That is so true. When I get with people my age, it's what we talk about, and then we get drunk, you know, or something like that.
Speaker 2:Something's never changed.
Speaker 3:I have some gummies or something. There you go, yeah.
Speaker 1:You can do that in Michigan. Now, gummy bears is what we're talking about. Yeah, horrible, horrible. I love having colleagues that are, you know, a decade, two decades older than me, because they're going through exactly what I'm going to be going through, so it's like there's so much wisdom around whenever you're experiencing something. I just turned 40, so, like you're saying like it goes by quick, huh.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you I wish somebody. And you know, I think when I was young, you know your parents always say stand up straight and all that like. And fortunately I did martial arts and got to see myself and went oh, I need to work on my posture and it got better just from doing it for so many years.
Speaker 1:What kind of martial arts?
Speaker 3:Black Wando oh Did it for about 15 years and ended up teaching children's classes for about seven before I moved to Detroit.
Speaker 1:So what level did you get to?
Speaker 3:Second degree black. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Wow, you were serious, my God I didn't start that way.
Speaker 3:I started just doing it for exercise. No, I meant like you got to it like a serious level yeah yeah, but I mean literally I started it because I wanted to do something exercise and I loved watching John Paul.
Speaker 2:Then damn, john Claude, take people's butts on TV and it's like, yes, the muscles from Brussels.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'd watch. What was it called?
Speaker 4:Something blood, blood sport Blood sport is such a good movie.
Speaker 1:The greatest sports sports monsox college.
Speaker 3:I watched it with one of my teachers one night and we were just like standing up and getting into it. You know, I was like I was a lot younger then, but I didn't start it until. I was in my 40s.
Speaker 2:Wow, is that the one that has pushed it to the limit during? The Push it to the limit. Yeah, during the sports montage.
Speaker 1:It's probably in every action.
Speaker 2:Oh my.
Speaker 1:God, man, that's so cool though, man, I would be so intimidated not to be prepared for a lesson if my teacher had a double black belt.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, how many years ago was that when I tried? When I moved to Detroit to work as a psychologist, I tried to find a place to continue studying Taekwondo, and the grandmaster of my organization lived in Jackson.
Speaker 1:Michigan. Please call it a dojo. It is.
Speaker 3:Well, I guess it was a dojo, but I mean, we did it at schools, gymnasiums, you know, I did it at the Michigan athletic club. So here's dojo. There were some people on the east side of the state that were teaching and I went to a few classes and one was an Ann Arbor. It was a schlep and the guy wasn't that good he might have been, but I didn't feel the connection, and the older I get, the more important that is for me If I'm going to be involved. That's why finding the right doctor, if I don't feel like I can talk to somebody I'm not, I got to look elsewhere, you know, and so that's what happened.
Speaker 3:Then I got into yoga, which was great for my back, and so I lived in Royal Oak in Detroit area. There was a place right by me. It was wonderful and my back was much better, and I did that three days a week and it was at the Y doing weight training and stuff, cause that was very helpful to me as a trombonist. Then I get the gig here, you know, and I'm going to the gym and I've got a trainer. I can't find anybody that I like to do yoga with. I tried Tai Chi again, cause I'd done that once and the person wasn't very good, and so I just it seems like I I didn't really totally let myself go, but I wasn't. I wasn't finding the time that I had when I was primarily just playing. I think the teaching gig is different. It's it's a lot, there's a lot more time.
Speaker 1:Cause what we do, especially when we're performing, like these things that these outside pursuits you're talking about are so wonderful. Right, Because when the majority of your career is sitting in a chair and putting pressure on your body mentally and physically, you know you need to find things that are doing the opposite. So yoga, martial arts, that's amazing. I'm curious, as a full-time professor, how the the physical toll is. Is it a lot of sitting and standing still, kind of thing, and like what's the most amount?
Speaker 3:Well, now I'm sitting all the time because of my back and my knees and all that. It's different from when I was younger. When I was younger, I stood all the time, I had my students stand all the time and now you know, I also learned throughout my life taking auditions and working with other students that actually sitting, especially when I worked on excerpts, was helpful as far as grounding me, and I never sat when I was a kid. Every lesson I went to with all my teachers always stood. So it was like, should I allow people to sit? Should I sit? And and it did work for several of my students so much better as far as nerves went Interesting, they definitely could be more rock solid and and there is like fatigue also from standing.
Speaker 3:I recorded a CD five years ago. I stood in all the rehearsals and then we got there. I went. You know what, how am I going to stand for five hours here? So I sat, and one thing that helped me, since I move when I play, is it made it easier for me not to move so much. We had the mic in one spot and it was in the long run it was much more helpful for me. They've done that. So I recorded my whole CD sitting down. I never would have, and I decided the day of the first recording.
Speaker 2:You know I have a policy for my own teaching and it comes from my own time as a student. You know, I always stood in lessons and I never thought to even question standing. And about my junior college I was studying with Don Harwood, who's you know pretty, pretty, pretty square, I mean, wasn't the military just that very matched? That has personally matched that. And I wouldn't, I guess, I guess in retrospect I wouldn't have guessed that this and advice or this kind of openness to the situation would have come from him.
Speaker 2:Because traditionally, like you're saying, it's like you stand in lessons. And one day he asked me he goes how do you practice? Do you practice sitting or standing? And I'm in my lesson standing and I go, well, I always practice sitting. He goes well, why the hell are you standing, sit down? And he's like it's about repetition and recreating your, you know like, like trying to recreate things over and over again, you know. And so it's something I offered to my students because of that, because I felt like I never asked permission but I was given permission and I thought it was for some reason even so simple. But I was like, yeah, that's how I prefer, I prefer to play, I prefer to play sitting I always have.
Speaker 3:And say I never sat except performing. You know, in the band or orchestra, even all my practice sessions I'd always stand and there is a. There is some fatigue, even if you're young, from just standing for two hours or three hours as you practice, you know.
Speaker 1:The challenge for me I mean, I love sitting, but the challenge for me as a tall I'm 6'4" and the if the chair is not tall enough for me, then I'm like having to activate like my lower back muscles to like sit up straight, and then that constraints breathing and it's a whole thing. So it's like I have to make sure, like the whole I think I heard it from Albert first where you, like you, always want to make sure your hips are above your knee level and that way you can like free up all those muscles. If I can do that, it's awesome and I do. I do think there's something to this I don't know if I've ever said this out loud to anyone that being closer to the ground, I feel like it's a different sonic experience, like you can hear a little bit different feedback, or more feedback from the sound hitting the floor when you're closer to it.
Speaker 3:But the idea of being more grounded. It sort of makes sense because you've got your feet and your ass, you know everything is sort of there's a connection there so that it may free up other things. Whatever it is, I never even thought about it. And then I'm sitting, and now I practice sitting for obvious reasons and several concertos that I've done over the past few years. After I hurt my back, I sat and that was weird and I said, well, I might have to sit. And the conductor says Perlman sits, it's true, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:But, like I said, what I led off my statement with is like there's a stigma around it and I remember I've talked to I don't know probably 50 different people about what would it be like if I gave a recital sitting down and or at least on a stool or something like that. And for me it's not just the grounded like Sebastian was talking about or that you're talking about, eva, necessarily, it's also just like I'm the opposite of you. I like to try to not move when I play in something about the stability of just feeling like I'm like locked in, like in a spot, and it just makes me feel, I guess, a circle back, it makes me feel grounded, but in kind of like a really physical way. You know, and I've gotten results all over the map Mostly people are like, eh, free to do you and me, but some people are just like that's no good Because of the visual aspect of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And unless you're hurt or something's going on, don't do that. And I'm just like, but why? What? I mean you see a cellist sit and you think enough, you think nothing of it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I prefer my cellist to stand, personally.
Speaker 2:They could pull their pen and pin out long enough to play. They really could, and so why don't they? You see, bases sit on stools.
Speaker 3:And I had this had to sit. I went out shopping for stools, and I ended up buying two different stools, one that's just a black metal stool and the other has a back on it, but it's high. It looks like one that maybe is at the breakfast bar in your kitchen or something, but it was tall enough and it was really heavy. That that's what I used, and one of the concerts that I played on there's a video recording of it, and it almost looked like I was standing, because I was the conductor was short and I was sitting on this high stool. My feet could touch the ground, though, and I felt more secure, and what on my back, it made it possible for me to play the piece. I don't think I could have stood at that point.
Speaker 1:There's a certain groundedness to Taekwondo too, right like a certain feeling, your stance, feeling your, your core.
Speaker 3:Yep, everything. Well, I didn't certainly didn't think about it in those days, but it seems like everything that I have done and just in life in general is related, if you can find where it is. And that I'm not saying I don't think I did it consciously, but there was. I sought something different from my music because I needed some balance in my life and I had already started working out and lifting weights and found a trainer. But I was joking with one of my students earlier today that when I went everybody was saying, oh, there's this new club in Grand Rapids called the Michigan Athletic Club. It's really great.
Speaker 3:It was right at the beginning of all this clubs. Now Grant was Grand Rapids first club and I think there might have been a YMCA there at the time. That was like sort of a dive where only guys went and you know, there's like a basement or something. So they opened this big club and no, I don't like the exercise. And then finally I went and I said, okay, I'm going to get on a bike for 96 calories and I'm going to drink a light beer, and that's how I started.
Speaker 3:There weren't craft beers then. So that was a good enough beer. And then it was like, oh, I could do twice that and have two beers, and then maybe I'll do a little more, you know, and still have a couple of beers. And then I just got sort of the bug for it and started doing aerobic stuff. Then I saw this really sort of humongous guy who was started the weight training program there and I hooked up with him as a trainer and then that started a whole another thing three days a week doing weights, you know, doing aerobic every day, and then doing martial arts, first just twice a week for myself, and then adding two more days to teach. So it was. I was at that club every day.
Speaker 1:So this whole philosophy and all these, this balance, like what did? What did you take from these things that you could apply to music?
Speaker 3:Well for playing the horn. It brought. Both my sides became more equal, because my left side has always been the side that holds my horn and is really solid. And then this is my loose side, even though I'm stronger on this side. But I discovered I evened everything out, and that was at the time when I was doing the herb concerto and stuff like that and just my life was so much easier to play and stand and all that. You know, it just was really I was lucky that I just happened to say, okay, I'm going to go burn off 96 calories and got the bug. And I think I'm sort of that might be a part of my personality that if I do anything I'm going to do it all the way. But it also sometimes keeps me from doing things because I know how the commitment's going to be.
Speaker 3:You, can't half-ass it, you can't just be like, oh, I'm going to casually start learning this.
Speaker 1:No, you're either on or off, right.
Speaker 3:I'm a little different now as I've gotten older. It's okay to try things and now this doesn't work, but yeah, it was a part of my pathology. You know Where'd you grow up Lockport, Illinois. It's about 25 miles southwest of Chicago by Joliet I don't know if that's the Illinois state pennies in between Lockport and Joliet.
Speaker 1:So you've been in Midwest for a majority of your life.
Speaker 3:Yep, I left. Well, I went to Interlochen my junior and senior in high school for the summer camp, Got a scholarship to Michigan and I had already gone on a trip to Japan in high school with Dr Revelli.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 3:I've heard lots of stories from kids about him, oh yeah, and he was a tyrant and mean and I loved it. Oh yeah, I wanted to please him, I wanted to show him that I could do what he wanted me to do, and it ended up being a great experience. But I had Michigan then in my mind and I wasn't from a family of musicians. People didn't. No one really knew how to guide me. What'd your parents do?
Speaker 3:My father was a grocer and my mother was a nurse before she started having a bunch of kids and then she stopped.
Speaker 1:That grocer life, though I mean that's a lot of hours.
Speaker 3:And he was gone a lot. He started as a butcher. His father was in the grocery business. He went to school at University of Illinois, but then he and his brother both left school and came back and went in the business with him.
Speaker 1:You're describing my grandfather right now. I know my mom's listening and freaking out because my grandfather owned a grocery store, was a butcher his whole life with his brother. And he took it over from his father and it's just those. I remember my mom telling me about the hours they'd put in. It's way more than people think and I actually still have the his butcher block table that's been there they had in the store since like the early 1900s was left me in the will so I have that. It's really cool.
Speaker 3:One of my sisters has the one from our first store. I think there was my grandfather's, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh man, so how'd you?
Speaker 3:get the music bug. Well, there weren't a lot of things for girls to do back then, and I always so you picked the trombone.
Speaker 3:There was nothing, there were no sports. I didn't know anything about the trombone but I thought it was. I always loved uniforms. I'd watch all the shows on TV and I'd march around my dad's grocery store like I was in the Marines or something like that. When I was a kid and we did in fourth grade, we had the test and the band director called my parents and said I scored was I don't know if it was a top score or one of the top scores and that they should buy me an instrument. And at first I instead of renting one, and at first it was like wow, the tuba is really big and cool. And I mean the confusion I think I felt as a young girl and not being able to be in sports and not having anything that was fun. The boys were having fun and I tried to join in, but it just wasn't going to happen and so they brought people to school to play and the trombone looked great. So my parents said OK, and I was eight years old, start playing a trombone.
Speaker 1:I was eight years old Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, sixty-one years, man Longest time.
Speaker 2:That's crazy to think. By the time you were 16, you had been playing the trombone for half of your life, and by the time it's 17, you'd been playing it for a majority of your life.
Speaker 1:And that's why she had a job when she was 19. Yes, so I'll do it. See, I'm less impressed now that you had a principal job at 19. You got like a three-year head start, you know.
Speaker 3:But you know it was and I don't think it came from a healthy place. It came from this sadness that even the girls I was in the Girl Scouts and the Girl Scouts we didn't get to camp the same way the guys did. They lay on the ground with their sleeping bags, we had tents and I was like pissed off. I mean pardon my friends, but I was like come on, we can handle it. You know, we girls can handle it.
Speaker 2:You wanted rough and tumble, huh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just wanted to feel like there weren't so many. It just felt like there's so many restrictions on who I was because I was a girl, Not because of anything else about me.
Speaker 1:Were you the only female trombonist, like in your?
Speaker 3:At that point, yes. Then one of my friends joined, but she joined because it was all boys, for different reasons. We had 16 trombones yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you think part of you was attracted to that, though to kind of prove and like you said you wanted to hang out with like the way the boys camped out. Like I want to, I can play an instrument that the boys play, kind of thing.
Speaker 3:You know, I didn't think of it at that point. I just brass appealed to me and it probably was because it was a more a boy thing, a mascot. There's no way I was going to play flute. It felt like I was would be pigeonholed again because I shouldn't, because people said girls don't play trombone, girls don't play tuba. And so when I got the green light to do it, you know my parents didn't know anything about music, so they insisted we take lessons, my siblings and myself, and it was. You know I'm grateful for that. I didn't always have the best teachers. I had to sort of find my way to the best teachers, but it was very important time for me every week to sit with an adult, a man who I felt cared about. He cared about me. I didn't have necessarily that feeling in my family because my mom, we had so many kids, you know it just wasn't how many. Well, she had five and seven years and then she had one later. Wow, it's 12 years later. It's 12 or 14, I don't know, and where were you?
Speaker 3:Second, second Second of a big family.
Speaker 1:So you don't have like the responsibilities like the oldest one has, but you're still like one of the Well, that might be somewhat debatable, because my brother was sick.
Speaker 3:My older brother was sick.
Speaker 3:He was borderline student with Paul's, like he was a creamy and in 1952, he had a lot of you know, just issues and very smart and, you know, got through school and everything like that.
Speaker 3:But at the time he had to go to see a special doctor on a regular basis to work on his coordination and so forth. And to be honest with you, I didn't realize it till much later is I was jealous of him because of all the attention he got and it sounds sort of weird to even say that but I was like, oh my God, he gets to go to Dr Perlman's and play with all those toys. And once, I think once I got to go and sort of watch and it was just like, oh man, why am I healthy, you know, why can't I do this? And it fed into that thing that girls aren't as important as boys, even though it really had nothing to do with that. But for me at that age I was affected by that a lot and I do think even to this day probably my androgyny is somewhat based on my early life just wanting to be who I was and not fit these. You know, my mother kept buying me pink things and I wouldn't take them.
Speaker 2:Thought about this a lot. Just because, like, I'm a firm believer that, like, no matter what instrument we play, we play our personality and it's like a really, it's a great like, I think you have an advantage if your personality fits kind of the role in the orchestra of that personality of instruments. So, you know, like, thinking about the trombone, generally speaking, it's a pretty like outspoken instrument, you know. And so, like, when you said, when you said like, oh, I couldn't play the flute, I'm like you know, knowing you, it's like no way you could play the flute, you know, like, so your personality matches, your personality matches the trombone, I think as a compliment, you know.
Speaker 3:Of course we're trombone players. But you know, when you say that, I think that my trombone was my voice and it in so many ways it spoke for me because I discovered it by practicing. I got better. So I wanted to practice a lot so I could beat everybody and at that time was beating all the boys, you know, and it was a pathology. It wasn't the healthiest thing but it gave me a lot early on.
Speaker 3:The first time I went to Interlochen I thought, oh my, I was scared, I didn't know what it'd be like there. And I think that first summer I was third and then the second summer I was first in band and orchestra and I wasn't going to let anybody beat me that whole summer and it was. I'm not, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, and so that drive, I think I'm fortunate. It was fortunate for me. And when I see especially students that don't have any of that, I don't know how they're going to get where they want to go unless they have that little bit of that cutthroat kind of feel they don't have to have what I had. But I actually, when I first started teaching not necessarily in Michigan State, because I taught my whole life I thought everybody was like me and everybody would want to practice and everybody would want to be the best they could be. And no way yeah.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I feel like chicken little, where I'm just like going to them. Like you know, the sky is falling. Come on, you got to do something about it.
Speaker 3:The same old story is like okay, I guess you don't want to. You know, yes, I do Okay.
Speaker 1:So you still competitive, you still feel competitive.
Speaker 3:Well, certainly not like that, and it's been these last four years because I did have this injury and I've kept playing sort of limping along. Have had some successes, but the fun of playing has well, it's not. It's not there because I have to think about everything I do when I play. I can't pick up my horn without where's my abuser. I never had to do that in my life and it's because I have no feeling in the left top.
Speaker 2:Oh, and that's from the injury.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I've been working with this guy in Australia. What's his name? Franco DiSerto. I think I've worked with a lot. I've talked to everybody Initially when I told you about it. John or Sebastian, what do you want me to call you?
Speaker 2:Call him JS, just like the composer, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I've always called you Sebastian, yeah, but I remember we talked about this at Third Coast one summer that's when I think Pete was there and those guys are there and you said you should talk to Pete because he had something similar and I did, and Dave Murray had something going on, and so I followed up with the same things that they did. And then, of course, I spent a lot of time talking to Colin online trying to, and followed sort of his footsteps to a certain degree and it wasn't the same. And I think now, after working with this gentleman in Australia, my lip went numb when I was playing a gig the top lip and I kept playing and I sounded fine and it felt okay, except I couldn't feel. This night One of my students was playing second. I just said, hey, aaron, you know Aaron, right, he was playing second. He goes. I said have you ever had this happen? He goes you sound fine, don't worry about it, maybe it's your spit valve. I said so I went, checked it out. It wasn't.
Speaker 3:And then the next, later that week, because it was one of these weeks where this was an extra gig and it was a big band gig and the part is how all these ledger lines and I just got back from doing my recital tour for my sabbatical and felt really I felt like I was back, you know, because I'd been really working hard on playing. As an older person because my tongue is slowed down I was really working hard to keep things going. And then this started and we also had this was it a Bernstein concert? At the end of the week was a pickup band that Teddy Abrams did. He'd go around and put these groups together and again, a lot of playing. In that and I'm sitting next to Justin Emmerich I said the same thing hey, you know, have you ever had the? Hey, you sound great, don't worry about it. So I just kept playing.
Speaker 3:And then we also were doing a sort of a showcase concert at Michigan State early the next week as part of auditions and I just that's the first time I sat to play and I decided not to do the solo, just play with the quintet, because I got a really sharp pain there and I I've had injuries before with sharp pains that overuse stop for a week, play soft for another week, add a little range and low, add little range, little volume, and four or five weeks I'm back. Essentially that's how I had dealt with these in the past and I was upset it had happened because I thought it was a really good shape. But I saw all those legend lines and I said, hey, you know, should we get somebody else to play lead? I could play second.
Speaker 3:Should I play a small horn? Nah, my chops are good now. What about a mouthpiece Puss, I can do it. And you know, that's just sort of my old crap from my youth that came back and said, yeah, you can do it. You know, you got to do it instead of I don't have to do that Sort of set myself up for that one, and then that one is still plaguing me.
Speaker 1:Do you have any idea what? What triggered the injury?
Speaker 3:Well, Pete and all these other folks were saying that they had a micro tear, that's what the diagnosis was. And it turned out that there's a guy in Baltimore I talked to and he believed that's what it was and I think I did what I think happened. Now, hindsight, and having worked with all these different people I had when I injured myself before, I didn't have this numb, numbing sensation for several days before the injury came. It was either nerve damage, according this guy in Australia, or a dystonia, and in order for me to continue, I just jammed it into my face and I wasn't aware of it because I couldn't feel it, and then that caused the injury. And then I started dealing with it as if it was the old injury.
Speaker 3:And at first, after a few weeks, I had a couple of sessions because I was working on this concerto. I played one day I just played like my old self and I went I am back. And then the next day it didn't feel as good than the next day. It was all back to where it was and that's sort of been the experience.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, as brass players as well as musicians, we're, we are elite athletes of very small muscles, correct, and you see, athletes do this too. They have trouble with a hamstring or they have trouble with their quad and, like you know, there's scouts at practice. Oh, you look great out there today. Yeah, you know, I'm feeling great, I'm going to be awesome on Saturday of all, and then it's the next day they're out, you know, and it's like, and it's just, you know, number one. Yeah, aaron Rodgers, too soon.
Speaker 1:He just didn't want to play the.
Speaker 3:Cowboys, oh my God.
Speaker 1:He didn't want to play the Cowboys this weekend. That's all.
Speaker 3:You know that's been the last four years I've been dealing with that and, you know, continuing to play, but I don't know how much longer unless something shifts, because I'm still playing every day and over COVID I never took a day off, really, it was always basics. You know, trying to find, I actually at one point moved my whole embouchure to the right and I got to the point where I could play pretty darn good with that. I played a couple of orchestra concerts with it and I thought, okay, this is okay. And then, because of all the years of abuse, I had a lot of scar tissue inside this lip and it started splitting because of the shape with the embouchure over here.
Speaker 3:And I had acupuncture. It was a good thing we were wearing masks at the time, because I mean, I literally had purple on my face.
Speaker 2:Oh geez.
Speaker 3:And it hurt like hell and I don't think it helped. It might have helped, but once I start playing again, it just popped.
Speaker 1:I mean I was, I remember, still talking to Colin about this, and just as much as that was difficult physically, I just I can't imagine how tough it is mentally just because the trombone is such a part of your identity. It's a part of how you earn a living, it's a part of how you express yourself and when that all of a sudden is gone. It's like you feel a drop.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I kept believing and again I think this all comes from when we're younger and how we survive and thrive that I could fix it. I don't think I'm going to fix it. It's just been trying to find a way where I could enjoy what I'm doing and I've had some moments over the last few years, but most of the time it's really like can I get through this? Okay, here, let's go. All right, that went okay. Bam, and everybody's oh, you sounded great and I'm like thank you.
Speaker 3:If it didn't feel good, I couldn't play my whole playing career. When I got to the point where I could really play the horn well and I love to do concertos and things like that was to be able to go out there and play with abandon, just sort of tune into the music and go for it and trust that things would work. And I can't do that now. There's very little of playing with abandon. It's abandon. It's all like okay, what do you got to do to get through this? Okay, we got to go up there, make sure that the ambassure is set this way, and so forth.
Speaker 1:So I imagine it's not fun. Imagine, in a way, just having to analyze so many things has helped your teaching even further, though.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I think my students have. I've been able to get my students more, having gone through this experience Not that I would, I would change it in a heartbeat to never have had it happen, but I'm experiencing. You know, I've had students with ball solver. I've had that in my life too, and there was nobody even talking about it in those days. Musicians, players wouldn't talk about it. It was too. There's too much shame attached to it or whatever. You know, we do that kind of stuff and I just started blowing air through the horn and I got past it by going to to. So everything I would do I'd have a like blow air first and then tongue it hard, and I got. I got past it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a. I had a student who was very similar. He won an audition with the Vesalva thing and his his solution was using a K tongue for the like, the first note after like a breath, like a like the first note of an excerpt or something like that. He would start with a K and then, because it first to him, it just like that would shake it up enough that everything else would be fine after that.
Speaker 3:It was. It's a lot of it is mental, if not all you know for sure, I mean for our listeners, Ava that don't quite know what that is.
Speaker 1:Could you explain kind of what you've seen with students that have it and things that might have helped?
Speaker 3:Well, when I first heard other people doing it, I could hear I think I'm a horn player. Earlier in life I heard somebody having that. I thought that was weird, what was going on. And it's not until you experience yourself that you get a sense of. Oh, and it was funny because we were doing Bartolcombe's Chirto for Orchestra on Grand Rapids and I was backstage and I was just going dum-ding, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum, you know the little solo and I went bum-bum after playing it. A couple of times that happened and I went what the heck? And it started. It wasn't an issue in the orchestra and for the most part when there was a conductor I could play.
Speaker 1:See.
Speaker 3:Just do this, but it went on for a long time. Wyatt Henderson was playing second tribune at the time. He's in Kansas City now and he one day it was just because I could play the concert, but I'd try to warm up and do this stuff he goes, man. It's amazing what the mind does to screw us up, you know. And so I just kept trying to get past it, and I discovered one day by just blowing air and then coming in, the cost. Sound is a good idea though too. I had a student with it once, and she would sort of she'd tap her foot, one, two, three, four pump, and that helped her get beyond it. And there is some woman in Chicago now who is working with people, and a recent student did some work with her and it helped him a lot.
Speaker 1:So basically, it's just, you know, you'll see it in students when they're just trying to start a note and they, just when they try to start, there's like a hesitation, like the yips kind of thing you can't get the air out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you were asking about what is Valsalva. I didn't know the name of it for the longest time.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's better, right, that you don't know, don't you think? Sometimes, if you see a student struggling and you tell them that's a thing and it has a name, and you have it, it makes it worse, right.
Speaker 3:Well, I had a few kids. After one guy had it pretty severely for a while, got over it, somebody else came in and said I think I said no, you don't, you do not have it, just play your horn. I was like, because it's so easy to you're right, just the power of suggestion, or having one moment where it doesn't. That's what happened to me.
Speaker 2:I think it's akin to like you ever say a word like 10, 15 times in a row and it stops sounding like a word, and then you're thinking about that word and it's how do you? Say it.
Speaker 2:It's just like mental loop and mental gymnastics that we play with, like this simple action of going you know, and anyone I mean look, I'm sure Ava, you would agree with this away from the horn.
Speaker 2:You could easily go, that's not a problem, or even maybe create a buzz that way, but you put the horn up and it's. There's something that's like it opens a file cabinet in your brain that just like you know, because I had it in late high school, really college. So I agree, I know what it feels like and it's one of those things that you either know what it feels like and you can you can try to help people if you have students or you don't know what it feels like and you try the best as you can as a teacher to deal with it. But, like you said about, you know like your students right now are benefiting kind of from your struggle with your current issues right now and you'd give it up in a second, like I would never want to go through the Vesalva thing again, but I do think it has given me a leg up in teaching it because I went through it.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know if this happened to you, but it seems like whenever a student and I've had a few over the years starts it, then I get it. It's like the heck, is this in the water? Or something. So I feel it. You know it's not, it doesn't take over, but I'll have it happen one day. I go okay, so, and so is dealing with this. So I gotta try to tell them what my experience is again. But I do think the easiest thing for people to do to start is to do just air attacks for a while, just to breathe, learn how to get the air moving again and the lips even just engaging. That seems to have cut the time down and give at least most of my students some hope that they can play a little different way and then eventually they're able to front the notes a little bit stronger, and so forth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was thinking about this over the summer not to stay on this issue for too long, but you know, in the sports world this is called the YIPS, right? You see a basketball player who's like they're just like an absolute threat from anywhere on the court and then they get to throw a free throw and it's like they can't, they can't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the catcher can't throw it back to the pitcher yeah, the pitcher can't throw it to first base, you know, and stuff like that. You see this stuff in all sorts of golf or trying to try to do a little chip shot and they just go like hung up and it's like, first of all, it's a great visual represent, representation of what we're going through. It's like this simple thing and that they've done 100 trillion times in their life. But the thing that I always use, that analogy, but the thing I unpacked from that further recently and just thinking about it, is like you look at these players, be it whatever sport, and it's like it's easy to say, oh man, like I'm really struggling at my instrument right now, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:And it's like in reality, you're struggling with one aspect of the instrument. But it's like you look at like these could be elite athletes and they just have trouble with one aspect of doing something. And it's like you're not going to say that they're a crappy golfer or baseball or basketball player. It's like they have this trouble with this one thing and it's like they just accentuate their skills around that thing until they figure it out. And yeah, it's just such a fascinating thing, not just the basalva thing, but you can apply to anything in music. It's just, it's such a mental game. There's so much, so much going on. Well.
Speaker 3:I hadn't thought about the correlation between athletes and people get spooked and they just can't do it and it's, you know. I talk about muscle memory and that whole sense of you lose faith and, you know, getting hope back and that kind of stuff. Oh God. It seems like it's so little, you know, and shouldn't be that big a deal, but it becomes. For me and for a lot of my students it becomes all the focus.
Speaker 1:So, eva, zoom in back a little bit, speaking of your students age Principal Trombone, grand Rapids Symphony for 24 years. What did you know about being a professional at the age of 19?
Speaker 3:Well, I felt very confident. I played in the youth orchestra Chicago for three years on orchestra. You know, in orchestra hall.
Speaker 1:I have a feeling confidence has never been a big issue with you.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, there have been a lot of moments of like self, like, oh my God, what am I doing? I'm a fake, all that stuff big time. But I think when I was younger before I had all kinds of performance anxiety issues trust me, I've been there too was, like you know. I went on stage with orchestra hall Chicago and I played principal my last two years there and we get, I did a lot of great music and then I go into interlocking and we did eight orchestra concerts every summer. The two summers I was there and I was also in the band.
Speaker 3:And then I got to Michigan and I was in the orchestra. And then I got Grand Rapids. You're a hot job and I just knew that if I knew my part and I get in there and I would just play. And some of it was from that early pathology that I'm going to show him I can do this. But it turned into my just feeling confident and joy in playing the horn. So the crap that drove me there started to dissipate when I discovered it was really mine, you know, and it took a while to get there.
Speaker 3:So when I got the Grand Rapids gig, it was at that point, just becoming. That was the beginning of it becoming a full time professional orchestra and bass drum bonus was good. Second guy you know, first Trump was pretty good and I just knew that I want to go in there and just play, leave with my horn which is what I tell all my students whenever they get called to do a gig or something just play, just play your horn, because if you're sitting with older people to some people are very love having young blood in there and some are angry or jealous or whatever it is, which I've seen a lot of and and being a girl was also another could could be a work against me if I didn't just go in and play back it up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I, when I got the Grand Rapids, I just was that way. And when I got to Michigan, I was that way. As you know, I I don't think I'm bragging, but my sophomore year I was practically and the Wind Ensemble with grad doctor, own master students there and part of my old competitive I'm better, I'm going to be hammering, you know that kind of stuff. It just I was not mean. I was always really pleasant, as a matter of fact, too pleasant. Probably my therapists would say that I didn't want anybody not to like me. So I would say or do whatever, even if it wasn't right, just so people wouldn't be mad at me.
Speaker 1:And, but you also really wanted to beat him at the same time.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So keep your, keep your friends close and your enemies close.
Speaker 1:That's a tight rope to walk, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, my, my, my therapist told me, said you know, it's fantasy, not everybody's going to like you. You just got to get used to it. It's just the way the world is, and you know. He was right, of course. And then I discovered that I wasn't really in in really honest in relationships with people when I operated that way in it. It ended up I paid a price for it.
Speaker 1:People please. Not the stream personally, but with the people I was with yeah, Once you started to achieve all these things, did the because I mean such a strong motivation was, you know you clearly loved music, but you also wanted to like, prove yourself and be first Like. Once you had this position, you were professional and that stuff wasn't happening as much.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:Did it? Did your motivations regarding music change?
Speaker 3:I mean, I always love to play, love to play orchestra and I, but I also love to solo. So I started moving a little bit more in that direction. And then I was in this quartet American classic quartet before you guys. This time with the first group was Randy Hawes, Don Lucas, myself and this gal, Nancy Fawcett, who wasn't serious as the three of us were, and then I think John Meyer came in and then after that was Jay Evans and then Charlie Vernon became the bass drum bone. Last time we we did play a concert here when I got the job, but part of that the last time was itf in Ithaca where we sort of premiered the castor aid and the Schneider quartet.
Speaker 2:It's so hard, not easy.
Speaker 3:Oh God, was that hard? Don's playing high Gs over there and I'm like why?
Speaker 1:why do we keep playing stuff that saxophonist wrote for us? What are we doing? Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3:I don't know, but no, he's awesome.
Speaker 3:The program was way too long. Friedman was there. He comes and goes. What's wrong with you? Guys Play like an hour and a half. I said I don't know, I'm just doing what they tell me, you know. But that was so. That was exciting to have that outlet along with the orchestra gig and then to start to, you know, learn that Donald Erbkin's share and get to play it at the American Symphony Orchestra League Conference. That was a big break for me because I got a lot of performances from that. And you know, there was something in one of the emails I got about experiences in your life that changed your life.
Speaker 3:And Catherine Comey was the conductor. She conducted the American Symphony and she was conducting Carnegie Hall and Lynn Harrell was doing Donald Erb's cello concerto and she loved it. I don't think she was familiar with this music and she goes. I would love to do more of your music. What do you have? And he said this, this, and he had written a concerto for the brass Chicago Symphony. I've got that. And he said I have a trombone concerto and I had been hitting her up to play with the orchestra to do Creston or something like that and she just was, she goes. I have a trombonist who would love to play your piece, he would really be great in this. And Donald Erb started laughing. She, he said this piece is too physical, I don't think a woman could play it.
Speaker 3:And Catherine Comey she said the hair stood up in the back of her said Ava can play this piece. She gets it. It was written for Stu Dempster. So you know it's got a lot of multiple phonics, it's got the didgeridoo imitation in the last movement, it's got all kinds of crazy things in it. And so she brings this to me and I'm going like I wanted to do Creston or Tomasi, you know I wanted to do.
Speaker 3:And so I just started trying to play it, you know, playing through some licks and stuff like that. And I even went out and took a lesson with Stu Dempster, a four hour lesson. That was a major hoot. We had a ball so. And he said well, you sort of get in the grasp of it and stuff. So I just sort of kept messing around with it. I was at the gym working out and I called since well, we didn't have cell phones or anything in those days. So I called my answering machine and there was a message. Did I want to do the herb at Orchestra Hall in Chicago in four weeks at the American Symphony Orchestra League Conference and I was like thinking to myself I can't play it yet. And I said yes, because it was one of those things that you know you got to say yes.
Speaker 3:You got to take go for it. And I was with the guy who was playing second trombone. We were playing racquetball and the oboe player from the orchestra and stuff and we just drank. We were so excited about it. Let's get drunk.
Speaker 1:You know, some people might just go practice. At that moment that was mental practice at that point.
Speaker 3:But then I thought, oh my God, I got to do this thing. So I started working on it and there's a lot of screaming and hollering in it and this was. It was hot outside and at that point I was between houses living with a friend and her kids and I'm yelling and screaming and playing this thing upstairs. And the cops came to the house and a little girl answered the door and the police said well, we heard, we've got reports that somebody might be having a danger here or something. They heard some screaming and stuff. She goes no, that's my friend Eva. She's playing the trombone.
Speaker 1:It's art, you wouldn't get it. And then he's like girls don't play trombone, yeah exactly Now.
Speaker 2:I know you're lying, oh my.
Speaker 3:God and I barely got it together. Oh yeah, and then I got a call like a week later saying the concert was canceled because the orchestra was going on strike or some kind of crazy thing like that. And I was relieved and upset at the same time. So I just you know, just a couple of days later I got a call and they said well, the American Symphony Orchestra League did not want to start out the beginning of this event with an orchestra going under, so they funded it and it was back on. And I swear it was just a couple of days before I left to go to Chicago where I started to feel like the piece was becoming mine. I did practice a lot just to get it in my system?
Speaker 1:Did it fire you up at all to hear the composer say that about a female playing it?
Speaker 3:At that point it just scared me when.
Speaker 3:I first heard it. But then I got to Chicago and we're going to do the first rehearsal. There's Don Herb standing right in front of me and his cowboy boots, and he had a blue jeans and a blue jean jacket on. I think he had a cowboy hat on and he's just looking at me sort of like so what kind of things do you play in Grand Rapids? And I said, well, modern things. I said, well, we just did this piece by Schwatner. We did this. He says commercial piece of bullshit. Okay, I'm feeling really comfortable around you and I at that point thought maybe I'd ask him something about the piece. And then I said, no, I just got to go do it, I can't change anything.
Speaker 3:So that first rehearsal and there's a lot of weird stuff in there Catherine was a wonder with modern music.
Speaker 3:She knew exactly the things she needed to tell the orchestra to do. And I don't know what those people thought either here they're bringing this check in to play you know she doesn't even live here or anything like that, and they wanted to sort of celebrate women because Catherine was conducting and they didn't do this piece. And we played straight through the piece and the very last note is like an X as high as you can play going down. And I discovered, because the whole last movement, my sort of personal interpretation of it, because you play in this didgeridoo and the sound comes and it feels like you're being overcome in the jungle, and then there's this huge cadenza just do it, you play anything you want before the very end. And I discovered that I could scream louder than I could play high. So I just put the horn up to my lips, bell up in the air and scream through the horn and then as I came down, I moved the horn down. It was somewhat theatrical.
Speaker 1:And then the cops came and well the orchestra loved it.
Speaker 3:They went wild. And Don Herbs walking up like this and I'm like shit. And he says I don't know about the scream at the end and the whole orchestra goes, letter scream, letter scream and he goes, okay, and I swear, from that point on Don and I became great friends, he and his wife. We played this all over the country and his wife would go with us. My mom got to know the herbs. I mean, it was.
Speaker 3:It was just really at the beginning of a special time and that concert I was downstairs and George Shulte's dressing room was right there.
Speaker 3:He has a picture of the Chicago Bears up on the wall and I wasn't in that space, although I ended up in that space toward the end. But I had my practice room and people were sending me flowers and I felt like a fake and all this stuff like how, what am I doing here? And I I had learned how to do self-hypnosis for performance anxiety a few years before that and I just focused and I visualized the whole performance from beginning to end. I just went through the whole piece, including the curtain calls and all this stuff at the end and I went up and those days I recall going up a spiral staircase to the hall and I'm just walking up the staircase telling myself I love to play the trombone and I do that to this day whenever I. And I tell my students don't forget, you love to play the trombone when get so nervous. And I walked out on stage and I played that piece exactly as I had visualized it. It was the most bizarre feeling like I could go wrong.
Speaker 3:And at the end, even the I had three, three curtain calls or something like that, and audience was on their feet. And here's this weird old piece we're playing that everybody, it's really, it's visceral, people's reactions are visceral to it. And I walked off stage and I, just like what just happened and I remembered that in school studying, is that Abraham Maslow's theory of you know food, shelter, clothing, there's this as you go up and the very top is called a peak experience. And because I literally and I, I I'm religious, but I'm not that religious, you know, and it's I felt like I was just a medium for this music and it was just going through me. It was the most bizarre feeling and from that point on, my goal was to feel it again and I've had a drug.
Speaker 2:Exactly Good drug.
Speaker 3:It was a drug, but it was profound because it changed me in sort of my paradigm, how I thought about things. And and it was after that time I started studying with this guy in not trombonist a guy in Vancouver, washington, who was teaching a course called science and the life force and he worked with people to to help relieve emotional blocks in their body that kept them from self-actualization. And then I was also. It was sort of around that time I started therapy with this psychiatrist in Detroit, dr Parlovov, because I read his book and I was so fascinated by it I wanted to meet him. Well, I met him, all right, and then I did I don't know how many years with him, but I told him one day he was one of the best trombone teachers I ever had, because I all of that stuff really changed how I operated in my, in my, my personal system and what it what's important, what it's all about.
Speaker 3:And then, of course, I've got more things that have come from that, but that experience, and that was in 1988. And then I played at Carnegie Hall. I think it was 90, it was the same weekend that Joe was playing the first time, playing his a solo with the orchestra. He was doing a Creston and there was a write-up in the New Yorker a week later about how weird is this? Two trombone concertos in one weekend, that's crazy.
Speaker 3:It was crazy.
Speaker 1:That's. That's beautiful to hear, though I mean, every now and then, if, if you're blessed enough to have a moment in your life where just everything works out the way you wanted it to, and it's so weird that it does, cause you've never almost entertained that that it's almost like wait what, wait it all it all worked out the way it should and it feels great and I feel wonderful and it's okay to feel this way, like there's nothing better right?
Speaker 3:I drank a lot that night. As you should, not enough to really get super drunk or anything. But I hadn't had any water and so I got this. The next day my mom lived still lived out in Lockport and we would invite a lot of people over cause we had a pool and stuff to hang out and swim. And I just got this rash and was miserable because I was dehydrated and drank it and I'm like, okay, well, I had this amazing experience and now Balance check out, yep.
Speaker 1:So so it sounds like that really spurred your curiosity in psychology, and I think that's something that a lot of people may not know about you. And it's super interesting is that you went on to get your Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology at Western Michigan in 1998. And of course, as anyone that has taught you know, you feel like you're a part time. You know psychiatrist as a professor, but you actually are one.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know about that, but that came from my knowing. Something wasn't right, you know, and I read that guy's book and I wanted to go. I wasn't in a crisis at the time, I had gone, you know, I'd gotten divorced years before that, and so I went through marriage counseling and then I did some therapy with somebody and I thought, man, I am really messed up and I had no idea I was, you know, it was just sort of like, oh, I'm screwed up, you know, and I was in a great good place at the time and I just read this guy's book and went and met him, and you'll appreciate that I'm sitting in front of this guy first time. Well, I'm sitting in his waiting room and he walks out and he stops right in front of me. He was a short guy but he had a lot of power and he just stood right in front of me, looked at me. He goes.
Speaker 3:I stood up and said, dr Barlovov, nice to meet you. He said how did you know who I was? And I said your picture's on the back of your book. He goes oh, sit down. He goes and I sit down and go like okay, that was weird. And then I go in and he asks me you know, why are you here? And I said oh, you know, I just think there's more in life that I'm experiencing. Things aren't, you know, things are pretty good, but I just I read your book and I think that there are things that I need to work on. And he said I think you just want to be more of a girl. And I looked at him and said what I said, what I am a girl, blah, blah, blah. But you know, I was pretty enthrogenous and so this whole thing that I've been talking about, my pathology from being a little girl and feeling like I couldn't do anything and I had to play the trombone and all this stuff to sort of prove myself.
Speaker 3:This guy says that to me and I had a tattoo. And he says, oh, and you have a tattoo. And I said, yeah, do you like it? He says, no, I don't like it. And I said okay, you know. And he said why did you get it? And I said, well, you know, I just I don't know why I got it, I just think it looks sort of cool. And he said, yeah, you just want to look. I mean, he just said all these things really directly to me and I'm like who the heck is this guy? And it began my five years with him. Unfortunately, it was murdered by one of the patients.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a big thing. It was horrible, horrible time.
Speaker 2:What's this guy's name? Again, I'm sorry to ask, but Dr.
Speaker 3:Ruvend Barlovav B-A-R-Dash-L-E-V-A-V. Why?
Speaker 1:did you after that initial encounter and this sounds like an exact like never meet your hero situation but why did you want to keep studying with him after he kind of talked to you that way?
Speaker 3:Well, do you remember Dr Ravelli?
Speaker 1:Oh, you like the tough guy.
Speaker 3:I wanted to. You know, maybe I wanted to like me, that part of my stuff, but I wanted to sort of wanted to prove to him or I'm not sure that was it exactly there was something about him that I was attracted to and I thought maybe this guy really can help me. However, some of the things he did where he made me wear a dress to all to my sessions and I cried and I was insulted by him you don't like me because I don't have a dress, you know that stuff but it was the hardest thing I've did. I just felt all the time like I was just being raked over the coals. But they were feelings and there were certain times when he would say to me I'd say I feel this, I feel this, I feel this. And he'd look at me and he'd say take your feelings and stick them up your ass. Whoa, it's not reality. What does your head say? What do your thoughts say?
Speaker 3:And the way he did therapy, it was a certain model that I embraced, ultimately embraced and this whole idea that there are two relationships in therapy with a therapist, like there are with a professor and a student, and in order to do surgery, which is what he called pushing those buttons to challenge how you operate. Is this really how you want to operate? Is this authentic or is this brought on by some pathology or some history, something historical? And it took me a while until I did embrace it and then I just would go in there and say, okay, I'm ready, filet me, go for it. And then he'd say, oh, you don't need that, you're doing fine. I'm like, oh no, come on, cut into me, do surgery and stuff.
Speaker 3:It was a huge transformative time and it was during that time that this guy, chuck Kelly, who did this body work and science life force course, was also working with him, because Barlow Bob would work with the thinking stuff and he would work with the emotional stuff, because some of the people that were getting really healthy in their head you could tell we're holding emotions in their body. So this I didn't have any history in psychology. I never took a class in my life and then it was. I was so I wanted to know more. It really drew me in and again my whole paradigm about destiny and all that stuff changed. I thought that I was predisposed to be a certain way and that was bull. I could really be in charge of moving forward in my life and what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 1:So he gave you the tools to kind of take more control of what you may have felt and perceived about yourself, in a way, if you had to boil it down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not sure he gave me the tools, but I mean, what he did is. Again, this is how I was it just I was so fascinated that I had to know more. I had to jump in more. So many times I drove from Detroit back to Grand Rapids because I was driving to Western for the psych degree and the reason I did that is I wanted to be in his training program. He said I had to have at least a master's degree and a related film. So I'm playing in the orchestra, driving down there, driving to Detroit two to three times a week, driving to Western a couple of times a week, and then I ended up playing in their quintet for a couple of years at Western and I don't know how many miles I put on the car. Those three years.
Speaker 2:That's a long distance for those who don't know Michigan geography, I mean it's not like insane, but to do it like on a regular basis to make that triangle was a lot.
Speaker 3:It was a lot, but again, I can do anything I can do it.
Speaker 2:I swear there's something about it that totally made me get stuck on the fact that he'd make you wear a dress.
Speaker 3:First it was shoes with heels and I went out and bought them, and then it was a dress. And this is in a group. I mean, I had individual therapy with him, but in a group with people nine other people from all walks of life and I fought him. I did all this stuff, the stuff that I couldn't do when I was a child. You couldn't touch anybody but you could say anything, and some of the exercises I do I'd stand up and push my hands against his hands and just say F? You as loud as I could in his face until I started to sob. It was like something dislodged.
Speaker 2:It was a very visceral form of psychiatry.
Speaker 1:And so you let your students do that to you.
Speaker 3:Well, to a degree. No, sometimes I do, sometimes I do.
Speaker 2:You ever have a student? I mean, I'm guessing I know the answer. We have a student just out of the blue. Just say F you.
Speaker 3:I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Maybe not out of the blue.
Speaker 3:That might be a little, because it's just like Does that happen to you a lot, Nick? Well, I'm sure they stay behind my back.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, have I ever had a student? I don't know. I've had them yell at me for sure. I'm sure you've had students yell at you, at the very least, ava.
Speaker 3:And sometimes I've encouraged them to all right, let's go more Right yeah, we have a block here.
Speaker 2:Let's do it and get on with it, you know.
Speaker 3:But I would explain that this was an exercise that I did that helped me a lot and that does help people If you're not just doing some weird thing that they're like freaked out about. This is what my therapist did with me and it really helped me get beyond this resistance that you have right now or that I have.
Speaker 2:I mean before we go down the. I mean this could be a whole. Yeah, we've podcasting in and of itself, but one last saw on. That is sorry. My dog's barking, kiki, quiet he's trying to express his feelings.
Speaker 3:You're that puppy in here.
Speaker 1:Oh, there he is, oh boy, oh boy, sorry.
Speaker 3:Little dog with a big bark.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God. Oh, he doesn't think he's little. The only thing I could think of and I'm not sure, but I feel confident that you might agree with me on this, ava, and you, sebastian, as well is that you could go down that road and feel this tension between yourself and a student, or vice versa, and really let's say us in teacher position say, all right, let's air it out, let's do this, come on, and that could. I could see a situation where that student is just not in the either the emotional maturity, the psychological maturity to be able to do that, and it could further deteriorate things. But I think that it's in some cases it's like I feel like I've gotten to the point with certain students where I'm just like we have nothing to lose, let's try this out, you know, because we're at a block, we have like a wall between us.
Speaker 3:I've had that issue with a few students over the years and it's not fun.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 3:And I would say of those students, most of them didn't get it, most of them still held resentment or things afterwards. And I would talk about it with colleagues or even once I went to see a former therapist said I gotta just talk this out, because if you're a therapist you do what they call supervision on a pretty regular basis and especially if you're not a doctor and you're licensed, you have to do it once a month or something like that I'm friends with quite a few, actually, so so you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and just because your response or my response, there's always a little bit of transference. You know that who treated me like that or who treated him or her like that, that we're having this stuff going on, it's not just about me, because I certainly didn't do anything to create this hostility or this resistance. You know it doesn't make any sense to me sometimes, and so I'll try to sort of figure that out, and most students are receptive to trying to figure things out, not everybody, you know.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting and, as all our listeners know, I'm a professional psychologist so everything I say is fact on these kind of matters. But I've definitely noticed it's always those people and it's related to the people pleasing the people that tend to be some of the nicest people you've ever known, that are just always over the top nice and will do anything for you, or the ones that I find are most prone to having explosions of anger because they will be bottling stuff up so much and not allowing themselves to just have a free flow of expressing their emotions.
Speaker 3:You got that right and I think early on I was that person Everybody thought I was so, even killed. I wanted everybody to like me. And then, a couple of times a year, I would just like explode, and it was usually in a safe place, but I would just let it rip and then everything would come pouring out. And so maybe now, after you said that, you can understand why this psychiatrist worked the way he did with me so that I lived more normal, like a normal person. You know, in reality he's always say reality rules, it's up a white wall, look up there, reality rules. Wow. And yeah, I miss him Every day. I am grateful for the fact that I did that for nine years.
Speaker 2:Wow, Were you an active patient of his when he was murdered? Geez, oh peace.
Speaker 3:I can't imagine I was supposed to be there that day actually.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:There were a lot of stories about him because his therapy was not unconventional, it was very unconventional and most of the people in it benefited, so much we get sort of. I mean, I was hooked on it for sure. There were people that said it was cult-like and stuff and there were people that were in the offices upstairs because this was in Southfield Michigan. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know what's going on down there. I hear everybody saying FU, fu and stuff. It's like all this stuff it really is, at least as far as I'm concerned. It's who I am and it's it all affected my trombone playing my music, leaving and then coming back Because I was ready to. I was playing, I think, the best in my life. At that point we just recorded the Irb Concerto, the Grand Rapids Symphony. Richard Stoltzman did the clarinet one and Miriam Freed did the violin one. I was honored to be in the same CD with those guys.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned Lynn Harrell before. I mean, he's a legend too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All right back to Ava Ordman, who is the person. I want to talk about. All right, so started at Michigan State in 2002, and I'm not a mathematician, so that's at least five years that you taught there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this was my 21st year, but I've been told it's my 22nd, so that's incredible, and am I?
Speaker 1:is it public knowledge that is this gonna be your last year, and are we allowed to say that, yeah, how do we feel looking back at that?
Speaker 3:Hmm, it's been a great ride I've. When I first got the job, I was working at the Guidance Center in Southgate, michigan, and I heard it was open. But I was pretty much committed. I was teaching at a Trombone and Oakland University, playing extra with Detroit and the opera there and things like that. But I was working 60, 70 hours a week. I was always in the car and there's in that area there's traffic. Yep.
Speaker 3:So Phil Cinder called me the last week and he just said to me he said I know you've been doing other things in your life and you might not even be interested, or I just wanted you to know about this and I just always thought you'd be a great colleague. That's all he said to me and I said well, thanks, I'll think about it. And then I went what the heck? And I just threw a bunch of recordings together, because in those days it was obviously different. You had to have CDs and you had to send all this stuff. Now you just put it all on the computer and I sent all my stuff in and a few weeks later I got a call as one of eight finalists and I was like shit, I gotta get a recital together if I make it that far. So you know I was working at the clinic 50 hours a week and then doing all this extra work. So I started working on a recital just in case, because to me nothing's lost to the universe. That's another thing. Barlow Bob used to always say nothing's lost to the universe. You put the energy into it, even if you don't get it. You've moved in that direction and I sort of lived by that and I try to help my students with that as well. But then I was down to three of us and I went in and did my thing and didn't hear for a while. And then the dean calls me and I know Jim Forger. He and I went to school together I think he was a senior when I was a freshman saxophone player and so I've known him most of my life and we've talked other times before I even got the gig there and he called while I was working at the clinic and I said, oh, is this my? Thank you very much, it was nice to have you come play for us. Actually, I'd like to hire you and I was like what? And I was very excited because I hadn't even I started to try to think about what it would be like having left Grand Rapids, come over here, bought a house, settled in a new area and doing a new thing, and I just got moved in the position of what was it? What did they call me? Well, I was head of the program, the adolescent substance abuse program. I moved into that spot starting from part time. I still didn't pay a lot, but I was moved into a more of a. Well, I'm still doing therapy, but I was in a higher position, so I started the process of getting over there and stuff.
Speaker 3:And when I went to meet with the Dean, you can come in as an assistant professor or an associate professor and this is what this pays. This is what this could pay. If you come in as an assistant professor, you have seven years to learn the field. Come in as an associate, it'd be three years or something like that. And I looked at him and I said you know, I'll know in three years if this is where I wanna be and I think you'll know if you want me. So let's just go with that. And that's what we did. And it was very short, just a few months. Where I was, I knew that's where I wanted to be. It was Surprising to me and the studio at that time. Yeah, they hadn't had a full-time teacher there for a couple of years and so it definitely Needed to be sort of looked at an overhaul. And I helped a few students out who shouldn't be in there and then the other ones hustled Because they wanted to stay in the studio and some of them have been very successful.
Speaker 1:What advice would you give to someone on how how you built your studio?
Speaker 3:How to build a studio.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how you went about building the identity of your program and the strength of your students one thing is I'm a straight shooter and I wouldn't have been before dr Barlow off, but I'm beyond people all liking me. It's about being honest and authentic with them and I think once my students knew that I cared about them and that's a. That's another weird thing. My students get it now, but it was something that I sort of learned as a therapist in order to be a really good therapist, you have to love your patients and I believe, in order to be a really good teacher, I have to love my students, even the ones that might not be that easy to love, but it's a. It's a different way to approach a relationship, and several of these students who left and did other things when they heard I'm retiring, they want to come to the retirement concert. They're all excited about coming and and and I always worry about you know, those that went this way or that way and building a studio.
Speaker 3:The hardest thing is money Nowadays, because everybody wants money and I always kept trying to Sort of Well, but I don't give this person that much. I give this person a little bit and I got to the point where to really get your best studio and your best students, you have to go for the best students and the ones that really want to come will come, and I always do try to correct if somebody comes and works their tail off and they're on a very small scholarship or Not any, I I do try to find ways to reward them and and my students know me as not being very complimentary Because I always focus on what we need to fix- right and.
Speaker 3:I tell them that and so, like we'll be in studio class and somebody You'll do something, who very seldom gets a pad on the back from Ordman, and I'll say, alright, listen up, guys, a Compliment is coming and they're like, oh my god, it's like bite. I just sort of setting up that climate of I care about you, no matter what, and I've got a couple right now that are struggling and Some of the hard, hard, the kids that don't want to do that won't do anything. I said you know, do you want to study with the TA? No, I want to study with you. I said, no, you don't. You don't do anything I ask you to do, or at least try, you know.
Speaker 1:And I mean what you said was really interesting about Loving your students. That's not easy, because that really set you up for you know, disappointment if it doesn't work out. Like how do you allow yourself to be that vulnerable?
Speaker 3:It's happened to where I have felt Betrayed, because when you love someone, you open your heart and and and and you also Say things that need to be said. If you're really honest and I would say that the majority of my miss, my students, have welcomed that even the painful stuff Not me so much but knowing that it had to be things would need to be said and need to be done. The ones that Can't get there I still feel compassion for them because I know, maybe know a bit of their struggles or that they are struggling. I've tried to get. I you can't tell people to go into therapy, but I always talk about.
Speaker 3:I was one of the best things I ever did for myself and I have many students that have sought therapy and it's helped them. Because I can't be the therapist and they may. We may have a few moments where we go in that direction and I say you know, I'm your Trauma professor and I care about you and I want you to be healthier and happier and all these things, but it won't work Because I can't I'm not, I can't be your therapist, you know and they know that. And it's better because you have to figure out how boundaries are. You have to figure out boundaries no matter what, and that's why I all my students call me professor Ordman, not Eva. When I first got the gig it was sort of like, you know, I just wanted to be Eva, but my therapist it was always dr Barlow up.
Speaker 3:We couldn't call it revan, although toward the end I did at some points, but it's set up Some kind of distinction that makes it a little bit easier when you are, when you have to do the hard stuff.
Speaker 1:And it sounds like your way of showing love might not be like the most obvious to a student when it's when you're coming down like so direct with them, but in fact that is your way of showing love, because that's like the fastest way to effectiveness, I imagine you know, when I first started changing from the people pleaser to Trying to be more authentic and honest and all that stuff, I was clumsy with it and I'd have to, like, force the words out and they might even have sounded harsh.
Speaker 3:And I remember when that was happening that I'd say to the students I'm having trouble doing this, I'm not, I haven't Lived this way before. I'm wanting to tell you what you, what you have to hear, as opposed to what you want to hear, and the only way reason I can do that to you is because it was done to me and it helped me so much. And so if I start from that posture, which is reality, and Again, most come around not all, but most do and I hope, I hope for them that they can continue in their own lives in a similar kind of way. It doesn't have to be exactly the same way, but just know that not ever is gonna love you and I was gonna like you. But be honest with people you.
Speaker 2:You've mentioned that you know reality is the most important thing, right? Well, let's be honest, especially when it comes to Such a critical world like the music world, where we're taking auditions, where it's you know, or it not to let's leave auditions out, not out of it, but only part of the equation. Auditions there is the simple as a lesson. There could be a concert, a review and a paper over you know, a big risotto you put on if you, if you become a professional. Look, we live amongst criticism when we live amongst failure. Like reality doesn't have to be nice, you know, and the the the sooner you can Accept that kind. It's kind of in line with you saying look, not everyone's gonna like you and it's like something. That's why it's hard to say it sometimes too. Just because it's reality doesn't mean it's easy to say or easy to hear, especially if you're not used to doing that, right?
Speaker 3:Well, that's what my therapist did to me and many, you know, even wearing the dress, that kind of stuff. Just I could have quit at any moment, I could have walked out the door, but there was something. I Think it was because I knew he loved me.
Speaker 2:Wow, what so? Who? That's amazing. How much that I mean it's obvious. To how much it has it Opened up a whole new chapter in your life. I don't want to say it changed. Well, it did change the course your life. For my, whom I kidding mean my life.
Speaker 2:You, you went back to school and you and you started a whole new career and then you started another career as a professor. So this, this really did affect every corner of your life, especially the musical portion of your life, especially with you, eva, that you've it's so clear that it's such an integral part of not only your, your teaching, but your core. You know, the core of who you are.
Speaker 3:Well, you know how it can be bridged, I think, to how I sort of simplify when I'm at now and what's to come is. I do believe now that the most important thing in life is relationships with people, and it's not something I knew or thought about early on, it's just do the job. This is my friend, that's not my friend. I'm gonna hang out, good party and go to home, sleep, get up, do everything good. It's just like who? How can I connect with another human being? The shared human experience is, even when it's painful and loss. We talked a little earlier about Irv Wagner, and I mean, when I heard that this morning and we didn't, I Never I didn't see him that much. I didn't do that much with him. I saw him a few times but was always such loving exchange with this man. And last Friday I sent a message to a couple of Younger professors and just asking if they had this.
Speaker 3:One piece by Alan Chase was written, I don't know, 60s or something like that. And Now I talked to Natalie Manish. She said I don't even know the pieces, so it's good piece, a good piece. So I thought, okay, who are the? Who are? That generation might know this, you know. And so Irv I think it was Irv Larry Zalkin, john Whitaker and Tony Baker. Those are the four people I just sent an email to do you guys, I know this music isn't a pile somewhere in my office. I've done it before, but I can't find it. I want to send it out. Tony sends me the parts Right away and he didn't have the score. And Irv says Let me check, I'll check for you on Monday. And John did to. They both did so. I looked for my piles again, couldn't find. I said I'd really appreciate if somebody has a score. He said this was Monday this week, said I'm still looking for it. Ava.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, and you know he was not in a great place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was. He's been not well for a little bit here.
Speaker 3:Well, and I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I. The only reason I knew it is someone one of his old students on Facebook shared a story it was like a local story in Oklahoma Talking about you know this professor at the University and now you know that he's sick but he's still like playing the trombone and like still teaching and all this stuff and he his students just lost their professor.
Speaker 3:He was teaching.
Speaker 2:I know, I know, yeah, man.
Speaker 3:It's just such a a very sad day, and the the number one thing about Irv is he was a kind man, a gentleman through and through, and Every time I met him I just felt like we'd embrace, hug each other, you know, even though we weren't close and didn't have a regular relationship. Again, it's that, those relationships and how they feel, I mean I just felt immense loss today. After this exchange on Facebook on Monday, and then he's gone. No, oh.
Speaker 1:Well, raise a glass tonight, right yeah, exactly, we're gonna have a drink for drink for Irv tonight, so I think we should move to the rapid fire section. So, eva, we always close with just a few short questions. Short questions, short answer, first thing that comes to your head, kind of thing. And Again, thanks so much for hanging out with us. It's it's been really, really awesome talking to you and and it's just incredible the the career you've had and you have to be so proud looking back at your tenure at Michigan State and the students that that Adore you, that many have come to the trombone retreat. So first one we always start with what advice would you give to your 18 year old self?
Speaker 3:Hmm well, after everything, I told you already it would be to To reassure myself that I'm okay, that I'm good enough, that I don't have to prove everything, that I don't have to run through life. I can. I can enjoy things more and and even though it's an 18 year old, you got to work really hard to get where you want to go. There was a part of me that it was too overt. You know, I didn't take the time. I mean, I'm not married now, it's married once, but those kinds of things. It's like why, you know, why did all those things to slow down? Don't run through life.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, favorite Michigan beer.
Speaker 2:Oh, hardest question you've asked yet, sebastian.
Speaker 3:It's like your favorite child, all right. Well, I am a big fan of Ellison's brewery. Ellison's and what the heck is the name of that beer. They have such strange names. Oh, it's a hazy double dry hop IPA that's got a little citrus in it. It's not called a new England style, I would say Ellison's. I loved her beer.
Speaker 1:See, you guys are spoiled up there with the amount of breweries you have. But it makes sense, because how else are you gonna get through those winters?
Speaker 2:You know, or those summers or falls, or spring.
Speaker 3:The reality is I think you probably know this, nick it's not as cold as it used to be here we don't have as many blizzards or big storms. We have a couple a year, but I think I had to Blow my driveway out only three times last year.
Speaker 1:So, eva, like many of our guests, you're doing absolutely terribly in the rapid fire.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry but, it's only terrible in the rapid section of it, that's all the answers are wonderful.
Speaker 1:The answers are wonderful, best advice you've ever received.
Speaker 3:Stick your feelings up your ass.
Speaker 1:There's a billboard that the entire world can see and you can write anything you want on it. What are you gonna write on it?
Speaker 3:it would be something like you know, wake up, or Because I am really worried about our world and I don't want to get into that, but I'm really worried about it, and so it might be something like wake up or slow down, something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, Do you have any regrets?
Speaker 3:God, I've thought about this Because I could say I don't really have any regrets, even though there are things I've done that I, you know, wish I hadn't done. I Think I think the biggest regret I have is that I it seems like I waited too long to Figure out how I operated. You know, I Just stayed in that rut, for it got me a lot of things in life, for sure. But I just Somebody said to me well, what do you do after you play Carnegie Hall? And I said, oh, that's just the beginning. You know, like that you've got when I because I did that herb there and it's like Okay, I kept thinking like, well, what's the next thing I do, what's the next thing I do? And that really is not a way to live. So I wish early on that I could have just Stopped the Smother Roses a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess that's, I know that's to be pleased to be cliche cliche, but it's really just a yeah.
Speaker 1:From my perspective, I see you as someone that's like so brave and was actively seeking something out that did, and you didn't have to, because there's so many people that live their whole lives without Ever trying to understand how, how they are and unlock themselves, so I think you're incredible. Honestly, hearing your story, it's a it's a tough question. Before Nick asks his last question, which I'm very excited to hear your answer. Is there is there, I'm sure you can. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you'd like to say in closing?
Speaker 3:Well, I I'd like to thank you, gentlemen, for starting this wonderful retreat that you have on Lake Michigan, because I have seen so many young people Grow from just a week with that kind of just sort of laid-back but intense experience and, yes, I've had several students there because of how close we are and all that, but I've never heard anything negative about their time there and it's wonderful that there's a place where people can go and get great tutelage and great butt kicking and leave feeling again the love, the love of Trombone and music and people, and in a beautiful setting. And you guys definitely put a ton into it and to have this, these podcasts be a part of that. It's you do. You're doing great work for the Trombone world and just for people.
Speaker 3:Well thank you, that's very appreciate that.
Speaker 2:It's. It's definitely a labor of love and it has paid off tenfold and we appreciate you Exposing your students to us being around, you know they love it.
Speaker 3:They love it, you know, they keep coming back.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know we can't shake them away. My question is what do you think students need to do, need to do more of that they aren't doing enough of?
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll try not to say be too heavy-winded about this, but it's something I think about a lot. I know we have to be Drill sergeants, as teachers and as students any, we all do. We have to have a regiment, we have to constantly be doing everything we can to, like an athlete, learn how to play the instrument, the physicality of it, how to how, everything just becoming consistent and rock solid. But I truly believe there are a lot of players out there today that that's where they end, they would be, and there's some great players. I would call them like trombone athletes or trombone jocks, and a lot of them have jobs and they're they can wow you with their playing.
Speaker 3:But I have in a lot of the younger generation. I don't hear a lot of artistry in performance and I have a really great student right now who has really mastered how to play the instrument and and he's gonna be with me this year and I think I don't know if he'll stay or not but he really knows how to play the horn. But I said, why don't we this year try to find your, your voice, find your, your music, because I do think at an audition, if you got the other stuff down and you also have this. That's what a committee, a good committee, will look for. There've been a lot of problems with committees.
Speaker 2:For sure, Trust me you know that too.
Speaker 3:They don't play like me. I don't want them, they don't this stuff. But to some, to just learn how to To be, to find your voice and be an artist and sing on the instrument you know it's. I think I started from that place and then just drilled the crap out of myself because I wanted to play better. But if you can get into that zone, you're gonna love playing the horn a whole lot more. So find your voice and seek artistry, as opposed to just seeking the athletic part of playing the horn. Ava Ordman, thank you so much. That was wonderful.
Speaker 1:I got to know you even better, which I've always wanted to do. Please come visit us more at the retreat. I think this year we have to spend some time drinking beer and really talking. I would really like that and I think I'm gonna be able to do that.
Speaker 3:I think I'm gonna have to spend some time drinking beer and really talking. It sounds good to me.
Speaker 1:And I heard a hot tub mentioned. I'm always a fan of those. I've been thinking about getting one. Should I buy one, I feel?
Speaker 2:like I think you should just turn your living room into a giant hot tub.
Speaker 3:Whoa. Now I'll tell you. As with what I'm dealing with now, with this pain and stuff, I'm like maybe I should I walk in tub. They're so ugly, but wouldn't it be great to go into my bathroom? It's, you know, in a 91 year old house. I've got this really cool bathroom. I put a white tub in there. But or get one of these $2,000 or $3,000 massage chairs. I tried one the other day that was really stupid, oh my gosh. It was awesome. Really you never know. Hot tub in a massage chair.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it's all you need.
Speaker 3:And a little can of some good beer.
Speaker 1:Can of some good beer sounds delightful.
Speaker 3:It does awesome.
Speaker 1:No, well, you take care and you, I hope you, you feel better. Thank you, you, healing, vibes working on it and I I hope you guys have a great fall season, wherever you are.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I do appreciate it and uh, I'll see you in the summer, if not before. Yes, take care. You know there's a job opening at Michigan State Wait which one.
Speaker 1:There's gonna be. There's gonna be a lot of people going for that, guaranteed. I might know if you very, very lucky, you're gonna have to do that president thing where you write a letter and like leave it on, the Right person comes.
Speaker 3:I would do that. I would do that.
Speaker 1:And all the letter says is fuck your feelings.
Speaker 3:Stick them off, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, sebastian, I think, uh, Ava Ordman might be a cat, because she's led very many lives.
Speaker 1:Whoa, I see what you did there. That's like an analogy for for cats living nine lives, but she did evade death. But wow, what a profile for for a teacher with. With you know, we always feel like we're part-time armchair Psychologist with this job sometimes, but she actually did the work and really studied. She is a psychologist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know. I would say that she's a professional basketball player with good fundamentals who has stopped dribbling because she pivoted.
Speaker 1:You're just hammering with these metaphors this morning. We got to record it this hour, every time, yeah we're hitting the sweet spot today.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, look, like I said in the interview, I've always been interested by psychology, philosophy, but in this I mean that doesn't necessarily apply to this specific interview but the fact that she is a psychologist and had this profound relationship with a very well, it seems kind of controversial.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't sound it. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to read more about him. I want to read one of his books. I looked up he has a couple of books out there I'm not exactly sure which one Ava read that kind of opened her mind to him to make her seek him out and go down the road of psychology herself. But you know, obviously, as you just heard, we definitely go down that road for a little while talking about it. But you know it's so related to what we do, especially when you start teaching. Psychology is so important when it comes to practicing and teaching and performing and all this stuff. It's so intermingled with what we do. So I don't think it was too much of a pit.
Speaker 1:I mean, 99% of my advice is just rub some dirt on it. Stuff your sorry isn't a sack. That's all you need to really say, right?
Speaker 2:I so want to say stuff your sorry is in a sack to a to a. Stuff. Your sorry is in a sack. I think the generation now is probably never even heard that.
Speaker 1:Like how would one go about that? All right, getting back on topic, my whole goal is to derail every serious thing you say today.
Speaker 2:That's OK, you can do that. One thing that stuck to me is she is a force, a personal force and a playing force. She's a very you play your personality. I truly believe that and she definitely does, and I mean that is a compliment. I hope that comes across that way. But yeah, just a very fascinating person to be around, direct, very direct, direct, drive human being, and just very fascinating to talk to, and I think that comes across in this interview very well.
Speaker 1:Sometimes direct people can can throw people off if you're, but once you like understand that's how that person communicates, it actually can be wonderful. And once you realize it's not personal and they're not trying to offend you and you get it over yourself, you're just like, oh well, we can make like a lot of progress quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and at the end of the day, with with her in particular, she, she's very sweet. I find her to be a very warm person. So that definitely, that definitely adds to her whole picture, is that she, while being very direct, she's very warm.
Speaker 1:We actually, when you had to run right after the interview, we talked for we talked, we all talked for a while. But like her and I hung out for like a little while afterwards too and she's just giving me really great advice, talking about teaching and being a professor and relationships with students, and just I'm a fan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's going to be. It's going to be interesting to see who kind of takes over the job the rain job yeah, it's a big job. It's a big school of music, yeah, so I'm very curious about what happens there. I also wish her the best of luck in her retirement and it sounds like she's not going to be bored. Yeah, she's a person of many interests. I want to talk about something. Oh, yeah, something hit me going on in my life.
Speaker 2:Some people might have seen me share on Instagram or Facebook that my orchestra in New York City Valley Orchestra is going through very difficult negotiations right now. We're not alone in that. I mean Philadelphia, san Francisco, looks like some other big orchestras coming up are going to be facing some very difficult times. And so last night just for reference for those listening it was September 19th. Was that? Last night, september 19th, we had our opening night, and it's kind of twofold. The opening night is always a big deal, no matter where you play, but this is the 75th anniversary of the company, so they had this whole thing planned where, after we finished the program, we played in my opinion, kind of a stupid choice of music. We played pomp and circumstance in all living alumni of the company came out. Oh, that's super cool. So, I mean, you know, some were recent and I remember them, I remember performing while they were in the company, dancing, and some were, I mean, octogenarians and you know, had to come out there. And walkers, you know, I was just thinking, you know, when I had a chance to look up a stage, because pomp and circumstance is pretty busy part. But these people now, you know, of course, when you get old, you lose your motor skills to various degrees, and these people who were really elite athletes and artists, now with walkers or wheelchairs and you know, none of us are that was the first thing that came across my mind in that moment was none of us are built to last forever. So, enjoy today. But it was a cool event, but unfortunately, our management is just being so draconian in their approach with negotiations and we're still so far, we're still so far below our actual wages of 2019. And then you couple in record inflation and our buying power is just, I mean, we're hurting, you know. And so we had a rally before the performance and I would bet there was probably 200 people there Awesome, more, probably more to support us and with handing out leaflets with information on why we're we.
Speaker 2:I've gotten a lot of messages from some of you and from my friends and colleagues around the country and world about if we're on strike right now, and I'll clarify by saying this we took what's called a strike authorization vote. So if you don't play in a union orchestra and aren't a member of a CBA collective bargaining agreement that's the contract you can't just go on strike. You have to take a vote from the membership to authorize, and then that is basically a bargaining tool that now our negotiation committee has saying hey, if you don't start playing, nice, we, we can go on. It's like a step yeah, so we're not on strike, we've authorized the ability to go on strike and so it's good that we're not on strike.
Speaker 2:But I just wish it weren't this way. And the reason I bring this up, obviously, is something going on in my life and it's stressful. My friends and colleagues are really hurting and scared. You know it's it's. You know it's our livelihood. It's very difficult and but at the same time it makes you really angry because you know other people probably don't know this the New York City Ballet is the most financially secure organization in Lincoln Center or performing organization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I always thought.
Speaker 2:So the ballet just people love the ballet and show it in donations and one thing that management is refusing to do, which is actually unlawful when it comes to negotiations, there's, there's sets of rules of like, just like. I mean it's ironic, but it's actually true. There's rules of war, right. There's rules of negotiations, of engagement. There's, yes, there's, there's decorum, and if you break that, there's actually it's. These have been spelled out at the at the highest level in this country, at the government level, of how you have to engage in negotiation in a fair way.
Speaker 2:So when we say that whenever you read about negotiations not being in good faith or being not fair, it's not just a feeling, it's actually like a legal like. They are not negotiating in good faith, it's a legalese term. That's not just like oh, I feel they're doing this wrong. That means, as some point they broke the protocol and they're actually acting in a legal way. The ramifications for that depends on the situation, how egregious it is and how an arbitrator would punish the party that is stepping out of line. But this is happening to us. They are being unlawful and negotiating, like I said earlier, in draconian fashion, which is not how you are supposed to negotiate between management and a labor union. And what makes it so frustrating is it's so obvious that this is just an anti labor, anti union movement from our management that they want to pay us less just because they want to pay us less. And I say this because our listeners, most of most of you, are aspiring musicians and or working musicians get a
Speaker 2:job or working musicians and unfortunately, you'll probably be in a situation sometime in your life where this happens to you in an organization you're in, be it an educational institution, where it's unionized, or in a performing institution, and it's really nasty and it's just. It really sucks to have to constantly try to validate why you deserve to live a comfortable life. We're not asking to be made rich. No one goes into music to become rich not classical music anyway and I just don't think. I don't think it's unfair to ask to be paid what we were making in 2019, which is actually less than what we made if we make dollar to dollar the same, because the dollar is not worth what it was in 2020. It's worth far less. So that's what's just sitting heavy on me, unfortunately. I'm sorry, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did a couple of things. We did that rally and then, oddly enough, all's fair in love and war and we found out that in our contract there's actually not anything about our uniform, about what we have to wear on the job, and so you can change what you wear for performances by a vote of the orchestra. So we had shirts made up on the back said pay the orchestra and big, bold letters, and we changed our uniform to wear those in performance, which did not make our management happy. But you know what, like, at some point, if they're going to act nasty at some point, you have to stop being nice to get what's.
Speaker 1:What's what you deserve you can get really weird with that too, With the dress code.
Speaker 2:I know and I told our orchestra committee. I feel like we're not going far enough because they were black with white lettering, so it's close enough to pit black. I'm like man, why aren't we wearing like construction worker vests and just that they have big writing on it and just getting way out there and we've? There's lots of things. I don't want to disclose too much about what we're thinking about doing next, but we have some things that are getting progressively and progressively more I don't know disruptive, I suppose.
Speaker 1:Well, if I may ask, like you mentioned and of course, don't share anything that you can or shouldn't share, but, like you said, the ballet violated something draconian Like what specifically was that?
Speaker 2:The most recent one was they, they an offer they had on the table, they they moved around numbers in a certain way that actually a new offer came in that actually made it a worse offer than before. And you can't do that in negotiations. You can't like, if things are going poorly, to say say, well, I can make it worse for you right now, worse than it already is. Yeah, and that's essentially what they're doing. So that's being grieved by the orchestra with the National Labor Labor Relations Board, and there's some other things too that I don't have enough exact details on. So I can't, I don't want to speak.
Speaker 1:But basically I mean because you guys took a big cut during the pandemic.
Speaker 2:We took a 15 percent. Well, we went. We went 15 months without being paid, yes, and then we we had a 15 percent pay cut coming out of the pandemic and they want to pay you less than what you were making before the pandemic.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So right now it was 15 percent, and then we clawed back to 9 percent below where we were in 2019. And what, what? Where the offer stands on the table now, we'd be at 6 percent less. So they want to give us 3 percent more right now, but that still puts us 6 percent. Gotcha, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's bad, and you know this is the thing. It sucks to stand up and fight and possibly think about striking, because then you lose all income. But at some point, if you take a deal that's bad enough, you'll never fully recover and get to a place where you were. It'll take you decades to get back where you were. So at some point you just have to say enough is enough and you know, draw a line in the sand and say this is, you're pushing us too far. Especially, the entire upper management of the ballet was restored to pre pandemic wages in the summer of twenty one. So it's only the unions especially when it's us, the stagehands, the dancers oh, the dancers too yeah, the dancers are the worst paid union in the in the company.
Speaker 1:That's. That's one of the hardest careers I can, and yeah, that's a whole other conversation. It's crazy. And they're thriving financially, or at least, yes, they're thriving.
Speaker 2:So, it's like OK, yeah, Well yeah, it's, it's frustrating, but it's a it's a nasty truth of being a musician is that you have to constantly fight to validate your existence and there's always going to be a portion of the general public that thinks you're overpaid. Oh yeah, regardless of where you are. I remember I was playing down in Jacksonville Symphony and they had just come from a huge lockout and something in the paper like an op ed thing, because they had released what management was proposing and it was something they were getting paid like 40 grand a year and it was like proposed that they get paid like 35 grand a year and I mean, that's, it's hardly livable, you know. And in the paper it was an op ed and someone wrote in saying getting paid thirty five thousand dollars to play an instrument is absurd. Like how can you expect to get paid for a hobby? Yeah, and that's that's what I'm talking about is like people see it as a hobby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see that argument every time and the fact that newspapers published. That is just so uneducated. I mean we could go into how the amount that the economy is spurned by the arts every year and how every local business around, and and yeah, you can talk about the amount of hours and how it's a full time job and it's not just the amount of time you spend there. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's like that's a waste of time trying to argue with those people sometimes.
Speaker 2:It's just screaming into the void. You know, and so it's. You know. I'd say this is a precautionary tale or a cautionary tale, excuse me that you know if you find yourself in this situation in the future. Dear listener, it's difficult, but you have to try to kind of Separate it in your brain. It's like there's only so much you can do. You can't, you can't just sit around and worry all day. You have to live your life and, you know, do what you can do when the time comes, when there's time for action. But the rest of the time you just got to, you have to move on. You have to move forward with your life. Not move on, but move forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we talk about how. I mean we talk about orchestral life a lot, but there's a lot of professional worlds involving playing music for a living and at the end of the day, you get some position that you've been chasing your whole life and you think it's a misconception that everything is is easy and like you're super valued and everyone's excited about you all the time. It's like you're a cog in the machine. Sometimes, once you get a position like that and you have to separate your identity from that position and it's so easy to get wrapped up in it. But your worth is not tied into whether you know what position you have or how much someone values you, how much they pay you, because it can go away and it really sucks in these situations. But that's why you know it's just incredible what musicians can do together. I've seen it time and time and time again the power that musicians have once they really are on the same page and work together, because it's what we do every day. So we're already ready for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're creative people. So well, kind of with that in mind, I wanted to pivot to a more positive. I just wanted to ask you what you're looking forward to in the upcoming future, near future or maybe a little bit down the road.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm excited about the mouthpiece coming soon to outnornscom. It's been a nice little because, honestly, my summer didn't feel like a summer in a lot of ways because I was grateful for the work. But, you know, we had our festival and then we had the International Trombone Festival and then I helped run a festival of trombones in Texas, which was right afterwards, and got to play with Cleveland Orchestra a few times it was really cool Pittsburgh Symphony. But I was working, you know, and it's good. Summer is hard, as we all know, to work so. But I had one little vacation at the very end. But just being at home for the last couple of weeks has been really nice and trying to catch up on things, get organized with the podcast. We have a lot of people booked coming up that we're excited about. I will not tell you who. Stay tuned Football, football, football football, tackle football.
Speaker 2:I'm two and I won my league and I'm number one in my league right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Nick Schwartz is now doing fantasy football for the first time and my heart is a flutter. He's so into it. No, life's good. Honestly, I feel I always feel like a little like heaviness, like when the summer's ending and work starting because of the cyclical nature of life kind of starts reminding you of things and I'm thinking about things getting colder and darker sooner and you know it just reminds you you got to be present and you got to be active and doing the things that you know make you feel good. It's easy to get caught up in it, but I know I'm. I know that when I'm proactive and just try to make things happen in my life, usually good things happen Very good, very good Uplifting.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend and subscribe everywhere you download your podcasts. Also, please consider being a patron at patreoncom slash trombone retreat and also leaving us a rating and review on iTunes and Spotify, as it helps us out quite a bit. Special thank you to howtonhorns at howtonhornscom for being a seasoned sponsor. Follow us at trombone retreat on all the social medias and our website trombone retreatcom, where you can also join our mailing list on Instagram. Follow Nick at base trombone444 and myself at JS dot vera.
Speaker 2:When life hands you a basket of potatoes, do you say potatoes or potatoes?
Speaker 1:Potatoes Stuff your potatoes in a sack along with your saris.
Speaker 2:Call your great grandma.
Speaker 1:Wow, if your great grandma is still alive. That'd be nice. Ask her about times of your.
Speaker 2:Then peel up those potatoes, put them in a pot, make yourself a nice soup and retreat yourself.
Speaker 1:Always ends up with. The pattern is if you're feeling something, pick up something, call a distant relative and then make some sort of food and then retreat. That's usually how it goes.
Speaker 2:Hey, you know, if it ain't broke don't fix it. No, you're not welcome in.
