Two Auditions

My companion was an ancient furnace resembling a grotesque, sooty snowman. Each day when it was time to practice, I descended the worn wooden stairs to enter a seemingly depressing place: damp, musty smell, walls of gray concrete and red clay, cement floor covered with a thin layer of rust-colored dirt. Dominated by the furnace, our unfinished basement had barely enough room for me and a music stand. But acoustically it was the perfect room for practicing the flute. The clay and the unevenness of the dry walls soaked up sound, forcing me to breathe more deeply to develop my flute tone, and except for Daddy’s nightly trips to add water to the furnace—he said it would explode if he forgot—the space was all mine. 

Built in 1929, the house was the smallest in the lovely Druid Hills neighborhood that sat at the western edge of Emory University in Atlanta. With a little effort I could block out the overhead noise of the TV or, worse, music from the FM Golden Oldies station. My parents spent their evenings in the living room, right above the basement, watching TV or listening to the radio. Conversation was minimal. I spent many hours in the basement, but the best ones—indeed the happiest hours of my teenage years—were during February of 1964 when I practiced for my audition at the Curtis Institute of Music, way up north in Philadelphia. It had been an uphill battle to get to that point. 

“Daddy,” I’d asked one day in early October of my senior year, “could I talk to you about something?” I was feeling inspired after a particularly good flute lesson with Mr. Little. 

“Okay. What is it?” Reluctantly, he put the newspaper aside. 

“Well,” I said, trying to sound confident, “Mr. Little’s been talking to me about applying to music schools for next year.”

“Oh honey, you know that’s a foolish idea.”

“But he thinks I might have a shot at getting into a good school.”

“So what? Do you think we could afford to send you to a music school? And even if we could, what would be the point?”

I wondered if I should push it. At least he wasn’t angry. Yet.

“Mr. Little said—”

“What do you think he knows about your life?” he asked sternly.

“Well, he seems to think I could pursue a career in music.”

“And pursue is all it would be,” he said, frowning.

“Can’t I just see if I can get in?”

“Why spend the money to apply, when you’re going to go to Emory? Just put that idea out of your head.”

I backed off, hoping I’d planted a seed. Meanwhile, Mr. Little kept reminding me that musical talent is best developed at a music school, not at a liberal arts college like Emory, where my father was an economics professor. A few weeks later, when I broached the subject again, my father’s response was more heated.

“Honey,” far from a term of endearment, his tone made the word a reprimand, “what makes you think you could ever make a living as a flute player? Don’t you think I know anything about economics?” 

“Of course, but—” 

“No!” he said, shouting. “It would be throwing money away. Don’t you realize how stupid it would be to pass up a chance to attend Emory for free?” 

And there it was, the ultimate epithet: stupid. In our family being smart was the only thing that mattered. It wasn’t simply academic success. Any action or opinion that conflicted with my father’s view of what I should do or who I should be was condemned as stupid, a label that carried a lot of shame.

“If you think you can make a living in music, you’re kidding yourself. Mr. Little doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Cowed by his anger, I acquiesced for a while to give my father—and me—time to recover from his anger before triggering it again. Pursuing a career in music was completely foreign to my father’s academic world. In his presence, his disdain for musicians made me feel ashamed of my far fetched, adolescent dream. But I persisted.

When I first took flute lessons with Mr. Little, at the start of eighth grade, I knew him only as a band director. Ill suited to that role, he was awkward in rehearsals and unable to find humor in the often absurd sounds coming from the band. He was not cool. I had balked at studying with this odd man, but even in our first lesson his encouragement won me over. His kindness and ready smiles contrasted sharply with my father’s disapproving scowls. Mr. Little obviously enjoyed teaching students one-on-one and had a knack for developing talented young flutists. His words of praise gave me, a shy and flat chested adolescent, confidence in my flute abilities and, gradually, my worth as a human being. Hard to say which came first, love of the flute or delight in earning Mr. Little’s approval. Lessons with him gradually transformed my casual musical interest into a burning passion.

After weeks of fruitless arguments with my father, Mr. Little mentioned The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, the one music school in the country that offered each student free tuition, room, and board. Mr. Little figured my father couldn’t use expense as a reason for not applying. I begged Daddy to pay for a flight to Philadelphia so I could audition for Curtis, but he refused. Then he found out there was only one flute opening that year.

“I’ll pay for you and your mother to fly to Philadelphia and audition for Curtis. If you prove to me by winning the audition that you are the best high school flutist in the country, then maybe you’re good enough to go to a music school. But if you don’t get in, you will go to Emory and major in something sensible.”

He knew my chances of getting in were less than one in a hundred, so he wasn’t worried about my enrolling at Curtis. Still, it surprised me that he was willing to pay for the trip. His anxiety about money made him wary of anything slightly risky, and this was a statistically bad investment. Perhaps he just got tired of my persistent begging.

As soon as my father agreed to pay for the trip—six weeks before the audition—I began figuring out ways to have more time to practice. I knew I’d have to work hard to have a shot at getting into Curtis. I needed four hours of daily practice, which seemed impossible with my heavy homework load. Because of its lengthy reading assignments, I dropped AP English. The teacher, who always called me Melinda (my brilliant older sister’s name), was a dour old lady with a thick southern drawl. When I switched to the lower class she was offended. “You do realize,” she said almost daily, “that Melinda would never do something like this.”

But neither she nor my father could dampen my spirits; I had never been happier than I was during those weeks of intense practicing. 

Mr. Little suggested I learn the third movement of Jacques Ibert’s Concerto pour flute for the audition. Written in 1932, the piece was technically very challenging for a high school student; it was also harder to memorize than other pieces I had learned. I loved the dramatic cadenza, with its wide pitch range from low C to high D-flat. I also liked the musical challenge of making the repetitious middle section interesting. I spent countless hours working the fast triplets in the main sections of the piece, playing them in different rhythmic patterns to get  them perfectly even, with no accents.

For six weeks the basement was an exciting place, a place of hope. I always began practice sessions with long tones (sustained, single notes) to focus on breathing deeply and developing a fuller sound. After about 20 minutes, I opened the flute part to the Ibert Concerto. Once I’d memorized the piece, I didn’t need to use the music, but by then, looking at the cover page and turning to the difficult third movement had become a ritual, one that aroused feelings of pride and confidence. I might have been staring at dirt walls and the ungainly furnace, but what a joy it was to work hard and imagine the unthinkable—that I might, despite overwhelming odds, be able to pursue a career in music.

From practicing so intensively, both my tone and technique improved greatly. But one spot in the Ibert gave me fits: the bars of tremolo (like a trill) at the top of the second page of the flute part. Mr. Little had two other students auditioning for Curtis. At one lesson, when I was struggling with the tremolo, he said, “Virginia has no trouble with that passage.” I was shocked and hurt. By that point, he was a surrogate father who’d always complimented and encouraged me. I channeled my disappointment into working harder. If I could make that tremolo perfect, maybe Mr. Little would be proud of me again.

 After weeks of intense preparation, including conquering the tremolo passage, the day of the audition arrived. I felt well prepared to play for the great William Kincaid, solo flutist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The odds were against me but I didn’t care; I had done all I could to be ready. The day before the audition, Mother and I flew to Philadelphia. She wanted to sightsee but I refused. Unlike my father, Mother respected my devotion to music. She happily acquiesced when I chose to practice instead of viewing the Liberty Bell. In the tiny closet of our room, I played through the Ibert amidst the clothes we’d hung up, hoping not to bother other hotel guests. 

On audition day, right before my assigned time, Mother and I sat uncomfortably in the metal folding chairs that lined the hallway of an elegant old building in Rittenhouse Square, one of the dozen or so pairs of anxious parents and hopeful flutists, each waiting for the ten minutes that would decide their futures. Through the closed door of the audition room, I could hear the person before me playing the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the excerpts I had prepared. To my surprise, he didn’t sound any better than I did. So far so good.

When a short, middle-aged lady ushered me into the room for my audition, I was surprisingly calm. She introduced me to Mr. Kincaid, then gestured to the music stand in the middle of the small room. With his bushy white hair, big red nose, and toothy smile, he looked more like an unkempt Grandpa than a highly esteemed classical musician. Even though his appearance wasn’t intimidating, I wondered if my nerves would hold up under the scrutiny of this famous flutist. 

The third movement of the “Concerto” went well—no memory slips, smooth tremolos, even triplets with no unintended accents, and a rather impressive cadenza. When I finished playing the concerto Mr. Kincaid smiled and said, “You must have worked very hard on that.” 

Then came the sight reading of orchestral excerpts. I didn’t get the Mendelssohn, but instead stared at the main solo from Beethoven’s “Leonora Overture #3”, something I’d not seen before. I was a good sight reader, but when I looked at the Beethoven, all I could think of was that if I screwed this up, I’d have to give up my dreams. Daddy would win. My hands started to shake, my heart raced, and my sight reading skills vanished.

“Why are you so nervous?” Mr. Kincaid asked after I butchered the piece. 

Too distraught to hear the kindness in his voice and too crushed to reply, I stared at the floor in silence. I had just blown my one chance to become a musician. My days of playing the flute were over. My father had won.

Two years later, during spring of my sophomore year at Emory, I received a phone call from the second flutist in the Atlanta Symphony. She told me she was leaving and wondered if I might be interested in auditioning for her position. I called Mr. Little, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year, to ask if taking the audition would be a waste of time. My call surprised him.  

“I guess, if you want to,” he replied, in a voice devoid of enthusiasm. “Sure, why not.” 

I took his indifference to mean I didn’t have a chance. Instead of being discouraged, I decided to audition. Perhaps living away from home had chipped away at my automatic acceptance of a male authority figure’s opinion. My courses weren’t too intense that spring, so I had time to practice the two weeks before the audition. I figured no chance of winning meant no pressure.

 In 1966 the Atlanta Symphony ranked as one of the top 15 orchestras in the country. As was true of most orchestras in that era, only a few of the highest paid musicians (concertmaster, principals in the wind sections) came close to earning a living wage. Among the 46 applicants for the second flute position, from Georgia and the surrounding states, I was the youngest, and surely the only one without a music school background. The audition consisted of a solo piece (I chose Charles Griffes’ “Poem”) and eight orchestral excerpts, most of which I’d studied in high school. Feeling no pressure, I walked into a small classroom at Georgia State University and played for four men: the conductor, two strangers, and Mr. Little. After playing reasonably well, I forgot about it and turned my attention to getting ready for a fraternity dance that evening. 

Late in the afternoon, the personnel manager of the Atlanta Symphony called and offered me the position. Initially suspicious, then ecstatic, I didn’t think to ask about salary or even to tell him that yes, I would accept. Too stunned to say more than an ambiguous okay, I hung up.

Weeks earlier, a friend had asked me to attend a fraternity dance that night, a chance to hear saxophonist Cannonball Adderly live. That evening, I barely noticed Adderly’s rich sound and energetic improvisation. I kept trying to take in the staggering news that I’d be part of the orchestra I had admired for years, sitting beside my idol, Mr. Little. 

Arriving home late, I waited until the next morning to tell my parents. Despite my father’s low opinion of musicians, I thought winning the audition would impress him. Maybe he’d even be excited for me. 

“Daddy, I have some great news.” As in most scenes from my past, I don’t remember if my quiet mother was even in the room.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“The personnel manager from the Atlanta Symphony called and offered me the second flute position!”

“He did? You must have played pretty well,” my father said. “What did you say to him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you accept?” he asked. 

“No, I guess I didn’t. I was too shocked."

“Have you thought about whether you can do this and still go to Emory?” he asked.

“No.” Should I point out it had been less than 24 hours since the call?

“Honey,” he said, irritation creeping into his voice, “you’re doing well at Emory, but you can’t possibly go to all those rehearsals and maintain your GPA.”

“I—"

“Why would you throw away your college education just to play in the Symphony?” 

I didn’t have a good answer for that. I was stuck on the phrase “just to play in the Symphony.”

“Don’t their rehearsals conflict with classes?” 

“No, they rehearse each weekday from 4:00 to 6:30 pm.”

“If you insist on doing this,” he continued, “you’d better ask the dean for permission to take an underload, although I can’t see him allowing that if all you’re doing is playing flute in an orchestra. Do you even know what your salary would be?”

“No, I didn’t ask.” 

“Probably very little since you don’t have any experience. And what about job security?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Honey, these are important questions because you probably wouldn’t last more than a year.” 

Like so many other times, my father’s words left me tongue tied and deflated. I left the house to get away from him. I wanted this to be my decision, but he did have a point: I would be extremely busy. Could I practice a lot, spend hours each day in rehearsals, and still keep up my grades? Maybe I should focus on my studies and forget silly dreams.

I walked from Emory Road to Oakdale, then all the way down to The Byway. It was a lovely April day. The further I got from our house the better I felt, enjoying the beauty around me. Atlanta’s spring is a colorful tapestry of dogwood, azaleas, hydrangeas, and flowering fruit trees. At one end of The Byway was a large house with a magnificent flower garden, always stunning that time of year. Peering through the wrought-iron fence, I took in the intoxicating mix of fragrances and colors, from the deep blue rhododendrons to large swaths of azaleas in every shade of red, from pale coral to deep burgundy. The yard had two dogwood trees, one white, one pink, and countless varieties of coleus, mosses, and taller flowering plants I couldn’t name. I let my mind go blank, focusing only on sight and smell, a transporting moment not unlike the highs I experienced when I performed profound works of classical music.

If I did join the Symphony, I would spend less time at home and a higher percentage of that time practicing in the basement, therefore less time interacting with my father. I walked back with a smile on my face. I would join the Atlanta Symphony in the fall. 

In my second year with the Atlanta Symphony, Robert Shaw was hired as the new conductor. Internationally acclaimed for his outstanding work as a choral conductor, Shaw was also the Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. After he arrived in Atlanta, Maestro Shaw fired one third of the members of the Atlanta Symphony. The only section he chose to keep intact was the flutes. I was lucky to be part of this period of remarkable growth and success for the orchestra, heady for a 20-year-old. 

Would I have been better off if I’d gotten into Curtis? My first few weeks in the Atlanta Symphony were equal parts exhilaration and terror, but after spending my life as a professional musician, I now know that even Curtis grads feel that way in their first job. I wish I could tell that 18-year-old that not getting into Curtis turned out just fine.

Artwork by Jan Steen, The Family Concert, 1666, Art Institute of Chicago

Ernestine Whitman was the flute professor at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, for 33 years, after playing flute professionally with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. During her professorship, she wrote articles for The Flutist’s Quarterly and Flute Talk. Since retirement she has been working on a memoir about her years with the Atlanta Symphony. Her writing has appeared in Six Hens, Persimmon Tree, and Jaden.