The youngest in a very musical family, Ava early on received her theater training and experience performing musical theater during her high school and junior college years. Although she has performed leading roles with several of California's regional opera companies— including Townsend Opera Players (now Modesto Opera), North Bay Opera and the San Francisco Children's Opera—she has primarily focused on concert and recital work. Her oratorio performances include Rossini's Stabat Mater, Händel's Messiah and Dixit Dominus, Haydn's Missa in Augustiis and Die Schöpfung, Fauré’s Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem and Vesperae Solennes de Dominica, Verdi's Messa da Requiem (a televised broadcast) and Te Deum, Saint-Saëns’ Oratorio de Noël, Randall Thompson's The Nativity according to St. Luke, Vaughn Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem, Respighi’s Lauda per la Natività del Signore, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, and J.S. Bach's Magnificat, St. Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass.
As a guest soloist with many Regional California orchestras, Ava's concert works include Das himmlische Leben from Mahler's Symphony No. 4, Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer, Ravel’s Kaddisch, the Pie Jesu by both L. Boulanger and Andrew Lloyd Weber, Händel’s Gloria in exelsis Deo and Salve Regina, Fern Hill by John Corigliano, and much more. She has appeared with the Solano Symphony, Camellia Symphony, Auburn Symphony, Gold Country Chamber Orchestra, Camerata California Chamber Orchestra, the Sacramento Choral Society Festival Symphony, and the Valley Choral Society Orchestra.
Ava has also had the pleasure and honor to sing the music of some of the world's leading living contemporary composers: Magnificat by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal (U.S. Premiere), In the Arms of Music by Matthew Harris, An American Requiem by James DeMars, and The Armed Man by Karl Jenkins. She also had the opportunity to sing Gounod's Gallia for the Centennial of the Panama Pacific Exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 2015.
Leading opera roles she has performed include Violetta (La Traviata, Verdi), Cio-cio-san (Madama Butterfly, Puccini), Aida (Aida, Verdi), Ariadne (Ariadne auf Naxos, Strauss), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte, Mozart), Georgetta (Il Tabarro, Puccini), Esmeralda (The Bartered Bride, Smetana), Cinderella (Cinderella, Gingold), Josephine (H.M.S. Pinafore, Gilbert and Sullivan), Phillia (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sondheim) and Polly Peachum (The Beggar's Opera, both J. Gay and Britten versions) which garnered her a nomination for a Sacramento regional theater Elly Award.
Ava has also performed in recitals, music festivals and concerts extensively throughout California, Europe, Central Mexico, and the Philippines. She has sung benefit performances for the Sacramento Women's Chorus and a local AIDS care program, and benefit concerts for Habitat for Humanity and for “at risk” children in Napa, CA.
