“I was a trained musician, out of Juilliard since June of 1966, and it was now the spring of 1967, the Beatles had just come out with ‘Strawberry Fields,’ I remember, and I thought they’d written that one line just for me, do you know the line I mean? The one about how hard it was getting to be someone? That one. There were a lot of musicals running that year on Broadway, but I couldn’t get a job with any of them. I mean, really a lot. My Fair Lady and Oklahoma! and South Pacific and Dolly and Sound of Music, I mean it, the list just went on and on, How to Succeed, Fiddler, Kiss Me Kate, Pajama Game, some really terrific stuff, when you think of it, Damn Yankees, Guys and Dolls, wow! But I could not get a job.
“So I found a couple of students who thought they might like to play flute, I charged them ten dollars an hour, but they didn’t really love the flute, and you’ve either got to love it or forget it. And then I began working at a drugstore near Carnegie Hall, the proximity had nothing to do with it, I mean I wasn’t hoping to get discovered or anything, it was just a job. Then I sold music for a while, at Schirmer’s on Forty-ninth, and then a friend of mine, a girl with the Radio City orchestra, she’d gone to Juilliard with me and had landed a job in the second fiddle section, called to say they needed a sub there for a week or so, the third flute was out sick, so I played that for a while. And I did two nights in King and I, there’s a lot of nice flute stuff in it, but that was just dumb luck, I just stumbled into that one.
“And then I got a call from a friend — you make a lot of friends who are in the music business, you know, music becomes your life, can you understand that? — anyway, this friend called, he was a percussionist, and he’d been auditioning for something, I forget what now, and he’d run into a bassoonist who said he’d heard the first chair in the City Opera Orchestra — this is flute, did I say flute? the first chair in the flute section — was desperately ill, he was dying of cancer or something, and they were going to be auditioning flutists all the next week!
“Bang! Like a shot I called Dino, hello, Mr. Proto, do you remember me, this is Joanna Berkowitz, I’m the flutist, I auditioned for you a while back, when I got out of Juilliard, I was recommended by Julie Baker, he suggested that I call you, do you remember me? Not only did he remember me, thank God, but he confirmed the rumor that they’d be hearing flutists at open auditions all the next week, and he set up an audition for me on the following Wednesday at ten A.M. Okay. I get there. This is the State Theater at Lincoln Center. It’s been built by then, this is 1967, August of 1967. They’ve already begun rehearsing the season, in fact, and here’s this flutist who’s about to drop dead on them.
“I have to tell you something you may not know, Jamie, despite your vast knowledge of matters musical and orchestral, and that’s if a first chair ever becomes vacant, it’s rare that the second or third chairs are promoted. The conductor usually brings in somebody from outside to fill the spot. Okay? Unfair, but who cares when you’re twenty-three years old, and a first flutist is about to die, and not only are you a remarkable flutician, as your teacher had told you ten thousand times, but you are also young, and fairly attractive, and most important of all — an outsider. The attractiveness, maybe it couldn’t matter less, dollink. The young, yes, it matters. But the outsider, it matters most — provided you’re good in the bargain.
“I get there a little before ten, and the people who are holding the audition include the concertmaster — do you know who the concertmaster is? He’s the first desk in the first fiddle section. First desk, dollink. The same as first chair. Desk, chair, the same thing. Just like in real life, no, dollink? Sit on your desk and start writing on your chair. Anyway. Concertmaster, plus first chair in the oboe section, plus first chair in the bassoon section — this is a woodwind audition, you follow, the flute is what is known as a woodwind instrument, dollink. And also the conductor, who in that year of 1967 happened to be Julius Rudel. There they are, and there I am.
“They ask me to do a little bit of Syrinx — that’s the Debussy piece, which of course I know you’re familiar with, but I thought I’d clarify anyway — and then I thought they’d ask me to do what a flute player might be expected to do at an audition, maybe something from the Bach D Minor, or a little bit of the fourth movement from the Eroica or maybe the Mozart G Major, but this is an opera company orchestra, don’t forget, this is people singing, my dear. So what they ask me to do, and by now I’m beginning to realize that the Debussy was just a warmup, what they now put in front of me is — vot else? — the Mad Scene from Lucia. And when I’m finished fumbling my way through that, they give me something from Daughter of the Regiment and then that old standby, if you’ve been playing opera for fifty years, the prelude to the third act of Carmen, the flute-over-harp section, except there is no harp there at the audition, just frightened little Joanna Berkowitz playing her heart out for a lot of old men who are probably tone deaf.
“I played for — I don’t even remember now — it must’ve been twenty minutes, a half-hour, something like that. This wasn’t steady playing, you understand. I’d do the Mad Scene, and then there’d be a little powwow out there, and then they’d ask me to do the next one, and somebody would bring the music up, this was all sight-reading, you understand, and then there’d be another little powwow and so on. When I finished the bit from Carmen, they thanked me and told me they’d call me in a day or two. There must’ve been another twenty flutists waiting outside when I left, all of them looking desperate.
“But, surprise of all surprises, I did get a call on Friday, and they told me the job was mine and could I start right away with tomorrow’s rehearsal, they’re doing Seraglio, I think it was, and was I familiar with it? I wasn’t familiar with it, I wasn’t familiar with too many operas at the time. In those days, this wasn’t too very long ago, actually, but back then if the musicians were familiar with a score, I mean if they’d been playing it over and over again for years, they might not even bother rehearsing it before the singers came in. Nowadays, the idea is to have at least one rehearsal, even if you know the thing upside down and backward, before your singers start. Anyway, the rehearsal was for two-fifteen that Saturday, and he wanted me there at two, and I said, ‘How much are you paying?’
“Now remember, I’ve been looking for a job with an orchestra for God knows how long, and now I’ve got one, and I want to know how much they’re paying. He explains to me that the orchestra has contracted to play for X numbers of dollars, and the scale for first chair in the flute section is blah, blah, blah — I forget what it was, something like nine thousand dollars, I really don’t remember. But what he neglected to mention was that the first-chair men are usually guaranteed ten percent more than scale — Julie Baker told me this, good old Julie. So I said, ‘Well, that’s fine, but I want fifteen percent over scale, and he said, ‘No, that’s impossible,’ and I said ‘Well, then, make it twelve and I’ll take the job,’ and he gave it to me! Can you imagine such chutzpa? Twenty-three years old, and I get a job with the New York City Opera Orchestra, and I’m haggling over salary! Wow!”