the low down

Born and raised in San Francisco, California, musician Ava Pham now calls Providence her home. A transplant with a never-ending case of wanderlust, she left northern California upon graduating from high school and headed south, where she earned her Bachelor of Music in both Composition and Studio and Jazz Guitar at the University of Southern California. The five years that both programs required of her left her drained, and Ava opted to take a year off before resuming her studies. Though Los Angeles wasn't her favorite city by any means, she had managed to make it her own and chose to stick around after leaving the USC bubble. With the many connections her undergraduate career had offered, staying in LA seemed like the most sensible decision, particularly for someone trying to find work in a field as tenuous and temperamental as her own. After a year-long sabbatical that consisted of playing various gigs where she could and working as a session musician, Ava returned to her alma mater to complete the graduate certificate program in Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television.

Ava is the eldest of two daughters born to Vietnamese immigrants residing in the Bay Area and making a living as an accountant and a college professor at the nearby University of San Francisco. Ava and her sister were a parent's dream: both did well in school, had 'good' friends, and didn't cause much trouble (that they knew of). She had an early start in music with rudimentary piano lessons at the age of four. She spent the next few years immersed in the Suzuki method of piano studies despite her lack of interest and stubbornness, though it was clear to her teachers that she had some sort of natural musical ability. Ava finally won the battle against piano lessons and rote memorization in when she was nine years old, thinking that she had given up the instrument altogether. It wasn't until a few years later in middle school that she picked up a guitar for the first time. The nail polish, makeup, and teen magazines that the other girls in Ava's grade seemed so interested in didn't quite catch her interest, but the guitar seemed like a good way to fit in with the boys in her class, the ones who still climbed trees and played video games that seemed much more interesting to Ava.

High school saw her tear through several bands and ensembles, and her teachers encouraged her to apply to music schools after seeing not only her potential, but also her love and passion. After a series of nervous auditions, Ava held three acceptance letters to prestigious conservatories: Oberlin, Berklee, and her top choice, USC. Staying in-state allowed her to remain close enough to home that she could visit on the occasional weekend, though she quickly found out that her workload wouldn't allow for that as often as she would have wanted. Her decision was met with much criticism from both of her parents; despite pushing piano on her at such an early age, neither of them viewed music as a lucrative career and would have much preferred that Ava choose a more conventional career path. After months of fighting over her decision, they eventually let her travel south in hopes that she would change her mind about her career once she left the coop.

Despite the lack of moral support from her parents, Ava excelled at USC and soon became one of the more easily recognizable students on campus. Her workaholic and perfectionist ways began to wear her thin after her first semester, and once she took a moment to pull herself out of the rabbit hole she had managed to fall into, she realized that she wasn't alone in all of this. She and her new friends made a concerted effort to keep each other from working to the point of exhaustion. They were, after all, living in Los Angeles. Why not take advantage of the city and everything it had to offer? Weekly trips to the beach, occasional drives down to Disneyland, road trips up and down PCH, and bar-hopping balanced out the hectic lives of these music students, where most of their waking hours were spent in various studios and classrooms, memorizing composers and dates and analyzing chord progressions.

Her double major had demanded another year at the university, and after graduating in 2006, she opted to stay in LA and picked up various jobs where she could, sitting in as a session musician for a number of bands, filling in at shows wherever she was needed, and putting her music tech skills to use with the occasional DJ gig. Ava had decided, somewhere along the way, that despite her talent and ability as a performer, she was a much more capable composer, and set her sights back to USC, where she returned to earn a graduate certificate in Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television. Her professors had encouraged her to apply for the master's program, but she just wasn't quite ready for such a huge commitment. Summer 2009 turned out to be Ava's last in her comfortable Echo Park apartment, when she moved out to Seattle, Washington, after being recommended for a job as a composer-in-residence for PopCap Games. Elated to be able to do what she loved and pay the bills without having to juggle several gigs and the occasional barista position, Ava embraced her new title at the video game company. It wasn't long before she grew bored, however, and after a series of frenzied applications and a long waiting period, she was accepted to the Brown University's Computer Music and Multimedia Composition doctoral program and enrolled in Fall 2010. To help subsidize her living costs, Ava also works as a session musician, happily making the commute to Boston whenever a gig calls for it.