Executive producer Errol Morris discusses the Oscar-nominated short doc The Only Girl in the Orchestra both with director Molly O’Brien and the film’s illustrious subject, double bassist Orin O’Brien, Molly’s aunt. The film tells how, in 1966, Orin was the first woman to become a full-time member of the New York Philharmonic, and who subsequently blazed a trail for more and more women players, who now outnumber men in the ensemble.
“My big revelation was when I went to the Music Academy of the West and Santa Barbara – they were a new school. They were only four or five years old. I went when I was 17 and I was the youngest person there. And it was just music 24 hours a day, seven days a week for eight weeks. It was heaven,” Orin tells Morris.
“I studied like a maniac. I was practising for hours every day…it was a 24 hour a day feast of music. And the other students that were there, and the teachers, they were fantastic because, as you know, the Second World War caused a lot of emigrés to come to America because of fear of being annihilated by Hitler. We had the cream of the crop of conductors, players, musicians.”
Orin also speaks of her first love of the instrument. “I started feeling the vibration of the bass being so attractive and so appealing and so deep and sombre and meaningful. I also was kind of religious at that time, so it was kind of a religion substitute, as it were, I feel. Most musicians feel that way. They feel that it’s not a profession, it’s a vocation. It’s not something you do for money. It’s something you do because you love it. And if you can get paid for doing it, that’s a plus.”
Click on the link above to swatch the whole interview between Errol Morris, Molly O’Brien and Orin O’Brien.
