SHE SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAD TO DO ANY OF THAT

reflecting on Vanessa Fralick's piece from earlier today

trombonist Vanessa Fralick p/c Jeffrey Wong

Earlier today, trombonist Vanessa Fralick shared her account of an interaction with Peter Ellefson seventeen years ago. Ellefson (approximately 45 years of age at the time), who was on faculty at a major trombone seminar where Fralick (then 21) was a student, did his best to engage in a romantic relationship with her. In a painful, cringe-inducing email exchange, we see Fralick do her best to decline—repeatedly—without offending a Big Fancy Man who could have a major impact on her young career. It’s really an impressive dance Fralick does, but it leaves us wondering, why should she have to possess that skill?

Why would a 45-year-old man in a position of power try to engage in a relationship with a 21-year-old who feels she can either only say “yes” or do the skillful No-Thanks-But-You-Are-Amazing dance? Well, because he could. And he hoped he would get lucky. And because he felt this was absolutely normal and that he was entitled to do it.

At the time Ellefson was coming on to Fralick, I believe the Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music brass faculty was all men. They have hired some women in recent years, but as of this collage I made in July, 2021, there were zero women listed on their website in the brass department. Like I’ve been saying for years, when women are absent, you are virtually guaranteed abuse of power and misogyny.

I wonder what these guys talked about in their department meetings. I wonder what they said when they drank together. I wonder if they went to strip clubs together and what they said to each other there if so. I wonder if they took their men students to strip clubs. I wonder because I wonder if these emails just happened once, just to Fralick, or if they were part of a culture of entitlement, where Big Fancy Men felt they could use young students with everything to lose for their pleasure.

Another one of these men in my collage is no longer serving in the Jacobs School of Music department after Claire Pollock’s public allegations she made less than a year ago. And still another is one I’ve heard many, many allegations about, and even read allegations in public posts naming him. Again, why did Ellefson think these emails he sent to Fralick were acceptable? Because, of course, his all-male peers around him accepted it. They may have been doing far worse, actually. Maybe they actually see his emails as saintly. After all, he did apologize 17 years later, after Fralick called him out without naming him, and after she herself made it big in the profession.

What if Fralick didn’t have a job in the Toronto Symphony now? What if she were a freelancer? What if she were still 21 or 22? What if she were a woman of color? What if she didn’t have a pristine career and reputation? Could she call him out then? Or would people say she’s crazy and making inappropriate allegations and going about things all wrong? What if she didn’t have the receipts in the form of his emails? What if they got deleted years ago? Would she still have the credibility she has today? I think we all know the answers.

I hope we can realize how very, very normal this dance women have to do around BFM is.

What if instead of the No-Thanks-But-You-Are-Amazing dance, Fralick told Ellefson to fuck off and reported him to IU back in 2007? IU would have said it didn’t happen at their school so it wasn’t their problem. The other BFM at the Trombone Seminar would have closed ranks around Ellefson to protect him and oust Fralick from the profession. Ellefson would have told all his friends and Bro Colleagues that Fralick is crazy and a bad trombonist. And then we wring our hands and wonder why there are so few women in brass.

Fralick did the right thing in 2007. And she did the right thing today, in 2025. But she should have never had to do any of that. She should have just been practicing her trombone and worrying about playing well, and now that she has a great job, she should be able to just sit back and relax like the BFM, not having to worry about what is still happening to young women.