Bassist Orin O’Brien. Photo credit: Netflix.
In Monday’s (3/3) Strad (U.K.), an unsigned article reports, “The Only Girl in the Orchestra, a documentary about US double bassist Orin O’Brien, has won the award for Best Documentary Short Film at the 2025 Academy Awards, which took place [in] Los Angeles, on 2 March. The film was directed by O’Brien’s niece Molly. The 35-minute film focuses on O’Brien’s life as part of the New York Philharmonic’s double bass section, which she joined in 1966 having auditioned for conductor Leonard Bernstein. In doing so, she became the orchestra’s first full-time female musician. According to a 1966 article in Time magazine, quoted in the documentary, O’Brien was ‘the only girl, in fact, in the 104-member orchestra, a situation unique at the Philharmonic, so there is yet no place for her to dress’. She remained a member of the orchestra for 55 years. The film had already received plaudits at film festivals across the US…. The film triumphed over {Academy Award] contenders including Death by Numbers, I Am Ready, Warden; Incident, and Instruments of a Beating Heart, which follows first-graders in a Tokyo public elementary school preparing to perform Beethoven’s ’Ode to Joy’ at a ceremony for the new incoming first graders.”
