Israeli-born Pinchas Zukerman sustained a prominent presence in the classical world across more than four decades through his multifaceted roles as a leading violinist, violist, conductor, and arts administrator. He began with the recorder before turning to the clarinet, yet soon followed in the footsteps of his father, a violinist of Polish descent. At eight he entered studies at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music; at twelve he relocated to New York to attend the Juilliard School, where Isaac Stern assumed legal guardianship. There he trained under Ivan Galamian, the institution’s embodiment of rigorous Russian-school technique, and received further guidance from cellist Pablo Casals.
After sharing the Leventritt Competition victory with Kyung-Wha Chung in 1966, Zukerman launched an extensive performing schedule. His emergence as an elite international soloist was marked by a New York debut at Lincoln Center in 1969. Appearing on both violin and viola, he capitalized on the broad repertory this flexibility afforded, performing duo sonatas and larger chamber works, joining Stern for a recording of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, and simultaneously developing a conducting profile. His programs spanned Baroque literature to first performances of scores by Lutoslawski and other contemporary composers. By the early 2000s he had issued more than 100 recordings encompassing the core violin and viola literature.
In 1980 he assumed the music directorship of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, where he stabilized its finances, supervised its move into a new 2,000-seat theater, and produced recordings—both as conductor and soloist—that became staples of radio programming. In 1998, coinciding with the end of his marriage to Tuesday Weld, he took the music directorship of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. His initiatives there featured extensive community and educational programs; he also became an early advocate for videoconferencing and webcasting as tools to convey the live experience of classical performance. He advanced the career of young Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts after viewing a recording of the player’s work sent from Russia, arranging Gringolts’s studies at Juilliard with Itzhak Perlman and leading the violinist’s North American debut with the NAC Orchestra. Zukerman continues to appear internationally as a soloist and guest conductor.
