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First female musician in New York Philharmonic ‘said no’ at first to Oscar-winning film about her life
3 March 2025, 10:19
Orin O’Brien was hired under the baton of Leonard Bernstein as the first woman to play full-time in the New York Philharmonic. Her story has now been told in an Oscar-winning documentary.
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Double bassist Orin O’Brien is the subject of a new documentary, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, which won the award for Best Documentary Short Film the 2025 Oscars. As the first woman to play full-time with the New York Philharmonic, who would remain a member of the renowned orchestra for 55 years, Orin worked with some of the 20th century’s best-known musical names, including Leonard Bernstein and Igor Stravinsky.
But she was never comfortable in the spotlight. When her niece – director, Molly O’Brien – first approached her about creating a documentary on her life, she said no.
“I absolutely said ‘no’ because I’m a rather private person. I do my playing in public, of course, but my practising in private,” Orin, who is now 87 years old, told Classic FM. “With my parents being actors, I didn’t want that life. I’m not used to being featured as someone whose life was interesting.”
But because it was Molly directing, she said yes. “I was very reluctant… but she’s just a wonderful person,” Orin said. “She’s my only living relative at this point, and I felt I wanted to go along with her.”
The Only Girl in the Orchestra has now been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. “It’s a tribute to her more than to me, as far as I’m concerned,” Orin said. “It’s nothing to do with me – I’m only the subject of this little collection of vignettes.”
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Watch the trailer for The Only Girl in the Orchestra
Orin joined the New York Philharmonic in 1966, and remained a member until her retirement in 2021. Before her impressive tenure with the orchestra, she played for 10 years with the New York City Ballet from 1956, when George Balanchine was its chief choreographer.
“And Stravinsky was writing for us at that time,” Orin recalled. “I was in the orchestra when we premiered Agon [Stravinsky’s 22-minute ballet choreographed by Balanchine] which was a very difficult work at the time.
“He was in the pit with us, overseeing what we did, and asking us questions about, ‘Is this possible, or should I write this differently?’ And so, of course, he never wrote differently. He just wrote what was in his mind. And we had to cope with it.
“It’s very difficult, because the work sounds almost like references to Baroque dance forms, but he wrote in his new 12-tone style. It had little tricky bits in it, like very high harmonics for double basses, which, on gut strings, is very difficult as they constantly go out of tune. There were a lot of rhythmic complexities, but he was wonderful to work with, knowing he was right there beside us.
When she joined the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein – now known as one of music’s most exciting and progressive figures – was its music director. Was Bernstein part of the change that helped her become a full-time member?
“Well, in the contract it says the music director has final say of any audition [and] can override the committee,” Orin said. “So I definitely know if he hadn’t decided at that point to hire a female, I don’t think it would have happened, maybe for another little while.
“I think the next music director, Pierre Boulez was, of course, French, and came from a slightly different background, but he was very progressive in a musical sense. And I think it didn’t matter to him. He wanted good players, period. That’s all.”
Bernstein was a hugely important figure in Orin’s life, serving as a musical inspiration over the decades. On top of all his conducting work throughout America and Europe, the maestro directed a total of 53 Young People’s Concerts, alongside other television programmes, which explored the orchestra, and compositional techniques of musical masterpieces.
“He was the greatest music explainer, I think, that ever lived,” O’Brien said. “Some people have called him the ‘American Liszt’ because he was a pianist, a composer, [and] an educator,” she said.
“When I joined the Philharmonic, I didn’t have a TV because I thought it was a waste of time. I had to practise, I had to go to jobs,” she recalled. “Then I realised the Young People’s Concerts were on TV. So, that’s when I got a television ... and I would tape them, and then come home and watch the concert.
“Bernstein was a force in music, and he was such a great communicator with [the] audience, and musicians. And I have to say, it was always interesting to play with him. It was never dull, and he never did the same thing twice. If he did something a certain way, he would always change little things, so you always had to be awake to catch it, which was just fascinating.
“I’m happy to say I played all nine Mahler symphonies with him. So when I teach it, I teach the way that Bernstein conducted it. I teach his tempos and his phrasing. I remember some of the things he would say to us to play a certain way.”
Orin O’Brien has spent a life working in music, teaching it, performing it, and being immersed in it. How does she keep her love for it alive?
“Music is balm for the soul,” she said. “I played piano for 10 years before I started bass, and I enjoyed playing because my parents were getting a divorce. The home situation was fraught with emotional undercurrents. To me, music was a total escape from the real world, and I just played the piano for hours every day.
“It gave me a tremendous outlet for emotional turmoil. As I think I say in the film, ‘Music is a way to organise your emotions and express them’. Of course, that’s obvious, but in fact, I remember Bernstein the first year I was in the Philharmonic, gave each member of the orchestra a present at holiday time, and he made an inscription in each book to each musician.”
The gift was Bernstein’s first book, The Joy of Music. “I remember I went home and read the whole thing one night, because I wanted to gobble up everything that he said,” Orin said.
“And he said something which is so revealing and funny but true. He said, ‘I can do things on the podium that if I did them on Seventh Avenue, I’d be arrested’.
“And I kind of enjoyed that, because that’s how I feel. Music gives you a way to express those feelings without hurting anybody, without damaging the environment or anything like that. You can be as wild and [as] crazy as you like with a chord, and it doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings, or disrupt nature, or anything like that. It just soothes your soul.”
