A career silenced
He worked full time as a freelance musician from the Bushnell to Broadway, but COVID-19 shut down Bill Whitaker’s profession almost overnight
“It was very difficult for me to spend time practicing because you question —‘Well, wait a minute. What exactly am I practicing for, except myself ?’ ”
— Bass trombonist Bill Whitaker
WEST HARTFORD — In the spring, Bill Whitaker — a professional bass trombonist for three decades — found it tough to even pick up his instrument to practice, so deep was his disbelief that the pandemic could stop his work cold.
“It was like, ‘Wow, this could take away a career,’ and that lasted for a couple of months where I went into a creative motivational funk,” Whitaker said. “It was very difficult for me to spend time practicing because you question — ‘Well, wait a minute. What exactly am I practicing for, except myself?’ I love my instrument, but there were a lot of unknowns.”
Since the coronavirus outbreak in the spring, the pandemic’s economic toll has been staggering, costing hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents their jobs, leaving little certainty about when — or even if — those jobs will once again return.
The sheer numbers are devastating, but behind those numbers are real people who are struggling not only financially but, in some cases, psychologically, as they wonder what a return to normal will look like.
After nearly nine months, more than 5,000 Connecticut residents have died, and there have been 130,000 cases of COVID-19. And for a broad swath of Connecticut, life is very different right now. Many people are still working remotely, live performance theater remains dark and restaurants are limping into what’s expected to be a tough winter.
Beginning in the late 1980s, Whitaker had built a freelance music career that included regular performances with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts and the Shubert Theater in New Haven. In addition, Whitaker worked as a contractor at The Bushnell and the Shubert, hiring other musicians for shows.
And since 2002, Whitaker has regularly performed with the orchestra at “Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, commuting between New York and his home in West Hartford.
“Between Phantom and all my other freelance that I could do, it was, for me, 52 weeks a year, as much as I really wanted to work, which as a musician is just phenomenal,” Whitaker said.
In March, though, the curtain abruptly went down as the pandemic surged in its first wave.
“For me, it was kind of just turning off the light switch,” Whitaker said. “It went from working to — bam — everything just shutting down, everything. There was nothing.”
At first, there was a trickle of performance cancellations that picked up in intensity. Delays that started out with weeks turned into months and then, no rescheduling at all.
Since March 5, Whitaker has played just two freelance gigs: a graduation at a private school in Greenwich in July and in a brass quintet outdoors on Long Wharf in New Haven in October.
Whitaker, 59, says he has pulled himself out of what he describes as a funk in the last three months, focusing on more positives, like that his family is healthy and his daughter, a teacher in Washington, D.C., still has her job.
But there are still worries straight ahead.
Whitaker’s wife, Kim, is still working for a nonprofit but she is now on a furlough that calls for a 40% reduction in her pay, at least through the end of the year.
Unemployment payments have helped, but Whitaker’s health insurance will end on March 1 through his employer in New York City. He doesn’t see the lights going up on Broadway until late next year.
“It is very expensive you know, and I’ve been lucky, I’ve been healthy,” Whitaker said. “But the older we get, the more expensive health insurance gets.”
Lately, Whitaker has been thinking about getting a job that has some health benefits, but he knows those jobs will be tough to find.
“I still run into friends who think I’m just getting paid by Broadway,” Whitaker said. “Uh. No. They’re not making money, and I’m not making money. There was two weeks of pay, and that was it.”