He and second wife Toby, who worked in facility management at the time, had initially headed to LA with the sole purpose of finding an appropriate space for the satellite office.
“While we were there she got a lead on a job, and on the plane home she asked if I’d consider relocating and opening the LA office myself,” he explains. “My head said, ‘No. I’m from New York. I hate LA.’ But my mouth said ‘Let’s see if you get the job.’”
Eleven weeks later, he was headed west. “Moving was an adventure. We’d just had a baby and LA turned out to be great place to live; kid friendly, super fun, lots of great audio people, and poker is legal.”
Speaking of poker, Berkow’s also passionate about the game and has enjoyed notable success playing it at a competitive level. “Tournament poker is really about risk/reward, statistical analysis and understanding the person across the table from you, which is the same as working with a building committee or negotiating a contract or fighting for your part of a project,” he explains. “You have to understand what’s important to them and what you’re willing to put at risk. I enjoy it a lot.”
He translates that further as it relates to the way SIA Acoustics approaches projects: “Whenever possible we want to work for the owner, not the architect. The things that make concert halls great are total balance, uniformity of sound, diffusion, reverberation, intelligibility and envelopment. We understand how to create them both electronically and architecturally.” The trick is convincing people to do what’s necessary, or as Berkow states, “To come up with something that meets building codes and the architect’s vision, is structurally sound and within budget. But other times, I don’t have to negotiate at all, I write a spec and the owner and architect say, ‘Agreed. Done.’”
He remains actively involved in a wide range of projects with differing levels of complexity and time commitments, from multi-million dollar facilities to studios in personal homes and garages. Still, he notes, “The idea is to have a unified approach to understanding what you’re trying to achieve acoustically and how to get there architecturally; looking at the measurements and asking, ‘What do the rooms we like and the ones we don’t like have in common?’ Understanding acoustics is less about defining what’s good than understanding what’s bad or what to avoid. If you avoid a bunch of bad things, you’re much closer to good.”
Added Interests
Presently, Berkow’s focus is also going into personal pursuits: more time with his son, rekindling an interest in photography, and mixing records, including the recent mix and production of an album for drumming great Ali Jackson. In addition, he’s working on three separate books, including one on acoustics, another on the process of building concert halls, and a fiction project. He’s also taken up hiking and continues to enjoy the action at the poker table.
In the fall of 2015, he joined the board of directors eTown to help guide the future of that nonprofit multimedia and events production organization which has a mission of educating and inspiring through music and conversation. And earlier this year, he established The Don and Fran Pearson Memorial AES Scholarship Fund to provide funding to individuals doing audio and acoustics research through the Audio Engineering Society.
Further, the trust and encouragement he’s received from so many over the years is being honored by teaching at various institutions, including the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and at Stevens Institute of Technology. “When people ask questions I answer and try to help. Whatever I know I’m happy to share,” he concludes. “If someone can do something with the details better than I can, it forces me to up my game. And if I can help someone up their game, it makes us both better.”
Based in Toronto, Kevin Young is a freelance music and tech writer, professional musician and composer.