The Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville’s annual report features a new type of cover model, and people are asking, “Who’s that girl?” Violin virtuoso turned fiddle player, Ada Pasternak, made her way to Nashville from Moscow via New York, Connecticut, and Los Angeles. The journey began when Pasternak was just six years old. “My parents decided to come to America because of religious persecution,” she says, “They wanted to be openly Jewish, and they wanted to give their kids a better life.”
As with many immigrants, the family struggled. “My parents were amazing,” says Pasternak, “I had no idea until I was an adult how hard it was for them, leaving everything behind including their own families.” Born into a musical family, Pasternak and her brother were immediately placed in music lessons. “That was my whole childhood,” she says.
And playing violin remained at the center of her life as she won competitions and played to large audiences, receiving standing ovations. Until her teen years when her budding career was sidelined by injury. “At the peak of my career as a classical violinist I developed overuse syndrome and tendonitis so my whole upper body went out and I couldn’t play.” Pasternak was forced to put her violin away and try to think about another path.
It was during high school, when friends were applying for college that Pasternak found her way back to music. “I didn’t think I would be going to college because we weren’t well off. I also didn’t know what I’d be doing because I hadn’t played violin in three years and I didn’t have any other skills or talents.” Or so she thought.
During this time, Pasternak's mother was taking a music therapy course at New School university in New York. This piqued her interest. “She would tell me about going to hospitals and playing her violin for people with dementia and how the music would completely transform them,” she says, “They would all of a sudden remember their lives and the names of family members.”
Pasternak's guidance counselor suggested she apply to Berklee College of Music, which has a music therapy program. The jazz-oriented school was an out of the box choice for the classically trained violinist, but at her mother’s urging, she applied. “It was like a movie. I applied seconds before the deadline,” she says.
At the point, she had not picked up a violin in three years. “I didn’t even know if I could play anymore.” Nevertheless, she prepared her audition playing the Jewish niggun, Ba’al Shem Niggun. Her father drove her to Boston for the audition, accompanied her on the piano, and she was awarded a full scholarship, the Presidential scholarship only given to seven students per year.
Arriving at Berklee, Pasternak says it was a musical playground which musicians from all over the world. “It was so fun. Overwhelming, but in a good way. Because there’s jazz, there’s bluegrass. It was every genre of music. It was so exciting.”
Still suffering from her injury, Pasternak stayed away from classical music, but experimented with it everything else, including mariachi, rock, composition, and the music therapy that originally drew her there. “I was just exploring because I didn’t know what I would do.”
And during this exciting time, she found her first love. But as with many first relationships, after two years they broke up. “When we broke up it was really hard on me. I didn’t know how to handle it.” But the heartache led her in yet another direction. “I woke up one day and it was a beautiful day in Boston, and I wrote a song. It just came out of my mouth.”
Pasternak calls the moment life changing and one she will never forget. She called her songwriting friend and the two sat down in a practice room and wrote the song. “The next day I wrote another song, and then another song.”
After finishing school, she continued writing and playing music and found herself in Los Angeles where she also explored the world of modeling and acting. Then came yet another difficult breakup. This one, even more heartbreaking. “Valentines’ Day we were talking about getting married and two weeks later, he broke up.” She says it changed everything for her. “I spent about eight months locked away in a beach cottage writing songs and trying to heal.”
Eventually, Pasternak came up for air and decided to explore Nashville. “Where is a place that has music opportunities that I haven’t lived in yet?” So, last summer she bought the proverbial one-way ticket to Music City and has not looked back.
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Along the way, she developed her own technique for strumming the violin and singing. “It sort of became my thing,” she says. She now plays guitar and piano and continues her signature fiddle style. “The violin feels like home because I’ve been playing since I was six.”
She is now working on her first album, a concept album of songs written during and after the breakup. “It starts with a song called Ghost of You. And then there is healing and growth that happens.” This process includes exploring the world of indie music production and fundraising. It is a challenge she is very excited about. “I want to be in the studio six days a week right now because I have all these songs boiling inside of me. But I have to pay the producer, and the engineer, the musicians.” So, she is embarking on a campaign to raise the needed funds.
Since October 7th Pasternak says she feels more connected to Judaism than ever. “I saw that on October 7th people just didn’t care. And I saw on October 8th that people I knew, like from Los Angeles, women were posting that the rapes weren’t real. And I messaged them back saying, ‘How dare you? This could have been you.’”
The pain of that drove her to write what has become a trademark song, 100 Days. “I set up my phone and just did an improvisation and I posted it to an Instagram story.” She says she received over 100 Instagram messages asking her to make the post shareable. “I wrote the song and then took it into the studio and recorded it and I released it.”
Since October 7th, Pasternak says she has become dismayed at indifference from the non-Jewish world, and surprised that some people do not know about the attacks. She has experienced it both in person and online. “They don’t talk about it. I would say more than half the people I talk to haven’t heard about it.” To help inform, she printed out a fact sheet that she hands out at the weekly Run for Their Lives walks here in Nashville. “I just think it’s important to educate people. I have musician friends who still don’t know what happened.”
She is also disappointed at her Jewish friends who remain largely silent. “I have Jewish musician friends who haven’t posted or said anything. I think they’re cowards.” She says it is important for the Jewish world to come together and show their outrage and unity. “I’m trying to inspire other Jewish artists to do that.”
So, as Pasternak continues to work on her album, perform at local venues, and keep writing, she also plans to become more involved in the Jewish community. And she never loses sight of how she came to be here, in the United States, in Nashville. “My parents left everything, including their own families behind to come to the States for religious freedom. How could I sleep at night if I don’t speak up.”
