Pinchas Zukerman has been recognized as a musical phenomenon for four decades.  His genius and prodigious technique have long been a marvel to critics and audiences, and his exceptional artistic standards continue to earn him the highest acclaim. His devotion to younger generations of musicians who are inspired by his magnetism has been applauded worldwide. Equally respected as a violinist, violist, conductor, teacher and chamber musician, Pinchas Zukerman is indeed a master of our time.

Mr. Zukerman was named Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in April 1998 becoming the fifth conductor to lead the classical-sized ensemble founded in 1969 as the resident orchestra of the newly opened National Arts Centre. His long-standing relationship with the NAC Orchestra began in 1976 as both conductor and soloist, and he was featured on numerous occasions with the Orchestra after that including a highly acclaimed tour of Europe in 1990, and a Hadyn CD with the Orchestra for BMG Classics.

Pinchas Zukerman is deeply committed to enriching the NAC Orchestra’s cultural involvement with the National Capital Region, across the country and internationally as Canada’s national orchestra belonging to all Canadians. Since his appointment, he has taken up residence in Ottawa and become involved in virtually every aspect of Ottawa’s community life. He has founded the NAC Summer Music Institute and Institute of Orchestral Studies. He has made five recordings with the Orchestra, and led the musicians in a number of national radio and television broadcasts from the NAC. He introduced a new Acoustic Control System in the NAC Orchestra’s home in the National Arts Centre’s Southam Hall, and began the Pinchas Zukerman Musical Instruments Foundation for the NAC Orchestra – another way of attaining the best possible sound. A pioneer of distance learning, he champions the NAC’s broadband videoconferencing programme known as Hexagon.

Pinchas Zukerman’s 2007-08 season away from the National Arts Centre includes a 22-city North American Tour conducting and performing with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; a concert in Chicago’s Millenium Park in honour of the 60th anniversary of Israel; a special concert at Carnegie Hall with the Manhattan School of Music; performances with the Gothenberg Orchestra led by Gustavo Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic led by Riccardo Muti, the Cincinnati Symphony led by Paavo Järvi and the Chicago Symphony led by Leonard Slatkin; conducting and playing with such orchestras as the Barcelona, Atlanta, Colorado and Pittsburgh Symphonies, and Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Orchestra; and a spring 2008 tour of Japan and China.

He also leads the Zukerman ChamberPlayers, a string ensemble of talented musicians mainly from the NAC Orchestra which has already performed more than 50 concerts and recorded four CDs since it was founded in 2003. The ensemble appears regularly at the most prestigious summer festivals throughout North America, including the Ravinia, Aspen, Tanglewood and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals. Overseas appearances have included London’s BBC Proms, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Schleswig-Holstein, Verbier and Barcelona. In August 2007, the ZCP made its first visit to South America for an eight-concert tour, followed by appearances at Switzerland’s Montreux Festival, the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, Romania, and the 10th Jewish Summer Festival in Budapest. Additional highlights of the 2007-2008 season include the ensemble’s return to New York’s 92nd Street Y for a three-concert series with guest artists focusing on works by Mendelssohn, and debuts in Miami, Puerto Rico, La Jolla and Las Vegas. Upcoming recording releases are viola quintets of Mozart and Dvorák, and Schubert’s Trout Quintet and Mozart Piano Quartet with pianist Yefim Bronfman.

In addition to his conducting and performing career, Pinchas Zukerman is strongly committed to teaching. In 1999 he created the National Arts Centre Young Artists Programme, which brings young musicians from across Canada and abroad to participate in master classes, chamber music rehearsals and concerts with Mr. Zukerman and an international faculty. 2001 saw the addition of the NAC Conductors Programme for talented conductors from Canada and abroad. This led to the appointment of Jean-Philippe Tremblay a promising young conductor from Chicoutimi, Quebec and participant in the 2001 Conductors Programme, to the new position of Apprentice Conductor for a two-year period. The Conductors Programme was led for its first five summers by Finnish conductor Jorma Panula together with Pinchas Zukerman. In 2006, conductor-mentor Kenneth Kiesler took over from Panula.
In 2002 the NAC announced a New Music Plan which included the creation of a Young Composers Programme to further the development of talented Canadian composers beginning in the summer of 2003. The Young Artists Programme, Conductors Programme and Young Composers Programme are now combined into the NAC Summer Music Institute. Mr. Zukerman continues to chair the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music.

In 2007, Pinchas Zukerman launched the Institute of Orchestral Studies, a year-round institute charged with developing highly talented musicians for orchestral careers. Its goal is to provide a real-world workplace experience for exceptionally talented students at a post-secondary or graduate level in order to help them for orchestral careers. In the 07-08 season, six young musicians selected by audition are spending six separate weeks rehearsing and performing with the NAC Orchestra.

The NAC has returned to a commitment to regular touring both nationally and internationally since the arrival of Pinchas Zukerman, and these tours now include a strong educational component. The 1999 Canada Tour included unprecedented community outreach, including over forty educational activities in addition to the concerts in each community. Mr. Zukerman was personally involved in nine of these over a 12-day period, including master classes and videoconferencing. A number of educational activities took place during Tour 2000 as well, including the distribution of Teacher Resource Kits to 12,500 elementary schools across Canada as well as events on the Internet which allowed school children at home to connect with the Tour in the Middle East and Europe. The Orchestra’s Atlantic Tour in November 2002 featured 60 education events in six cities, ranging from master classes, and question-and-answer sessions, to sectional rehearsals with youth orchestras and a student matinee. The Orchestra’s 17-day U.S. and Mexico Tour in November 2003 was its most ambitious yet with over 70 educational events taking place, including the distribution of Mozart Teachers Resource Kits to 18,500 schools across Canada and in selected tour cities. There were also five live Internet webcasts, which can still be viewed on the NAC’s ground-breaking performing arts education website: www.ArtsAlive.ca. Education continues to play an increasingly important role in the NAC Orchestra’s tours. Both the Orchestra’s tour to British Columbia in November 2004 and to Alberta and Saskatchewan in November 2005 included over 90 education events in addition to the concerts. One of these was the Orchestra’s first live webcast of a student matinee to thousands of children in Alberta. The most recent tour of the NAC Orchestra was to Quebec in November 2006 with Zukerman continuing to be personally involved in education activities with advanced students.

Pinchas Zukerman pioneered the use of videoconferencing technology in music education to sustain the personal interaction with his students while performing around the world. He has led the NAC into a close partnership with Canada’s National Research Council and Communications Research Centre, and has been a leading champion behind the creation of the NAC’s own broadband outreach programme, Hexagon. Videoconferenced masterclasses with leading musical pedagogues take place on a regular basis at the NAC.

Mr. Zukerman is committed to recording with the NAC Orchestra.  His first recording with NACO after being named Music Director was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, on which he is featured as conductor and violinist for a CBC Records 1999 release that also includes Haydn’s Symphony No. 49, “La Passione”. In the year 2000, Pinchas Zukerman recorded Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 2, plus Beethoven’s Romance No. 2 with the NAC Orchestra for CBC Records. This CD, marked Mr. Zukerman’s first-ever recording of a Beethoven symphony. In 2001, CBC Records released a chamber music recording of Mozart Flute Quartets featuring Zukerman on viola along with NACO principal flute Joanna G’froerer, principal cello Amanda Forsyth and Canadian violinist Martin Beaver. Opus Magazine named this CD the best Canadian chamber music recording of the year. In 2002, an all-Schubert CD of Symphonies 1 and 2 and the Rondo for Violin and Strings was released. The Vivaldi, Beethoven and Schubert CDs were included in the Teacher’s Resource Kits provided to elementary schools for the Orchestra’s 1999, 2000 and 2002 tours respectively. The Orchestra’s most recent recording is an all-Mozart double CD of chamber and orchestral music which was featured in the education activities on the U.S. and Mexico Tour 2003. The chamber music CD was nominated for a Juno Award in 2004.

Pinchas Zukerman’s prolific discography as a soloist numbers more than 100 releases, and is widely representative of the violin and viola repertoire. His catalogue of recordings for Angel, CBS, Deutsche Grammophon, London, Philips, and RCA contains 21 Grammy nominations and two Grammy awards: “Best Chamber Music Performance” in 1980 and “Best Classical Performance – International Soloist with Orchestra” in 1981.

Pinchas Zukerman has been involved in numerous television specials over the years, including several with the NAC Orchestra. As conductor and interview subject, he was featured in the first six-part Whole Notes series of introductions to the great composers produced by Sound Venture Productions for the BRAVO! television network. The Orchestra with Zukerman as violin soloist provided the musical score for choreographer James Kudelka’s ballet The Four Seasons, produced for a television special by Rhombus Media.

Mr. Zukerman’s season-opening all-Beethoven concert of 1999 with soloists Yefim Bronfman and Zukerman was recorded for broadcast by CBC Television. The Orchestra recorded live in performance the television special My Secret Heart with superstar Canadian tenor Ben Heppner. Zukerman and the Orchestra were featured in Crossing Bridges, a documentary by Rhombus Media about the Orchestra’s Tour 2000 to the Middle East which won the prestigious Gold World Medal at the 2001 New York Festivals.

Mr. Zukerman appeared with the Chicago Symphony on a PBS special, Mozart by the Masters and was a performer and presenter at the 1994 Grammy Awards ceremony. He has been a frequent performer on Live From Lincoln Center, and has collaborated with British filmmaker Christopher Nupen on several projects including the Here to Make Music series. His violin playing can be heard on the film soundtracks of Prince of Tides and Critical Care. He has twice been a featured presenter at the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors paying tribute to his friends Itzhak Perlman in 2003 and Zubin Mehta in 2006.

Other recent highlights include a recital tour in 2006 with violinist Itzhak Perlman to Washington’s Kennedy Center, New York’s Lincoln Center, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami and Chicago as well as the National Arts Centre; the FiddleFest fundraiser for the Opus 118 Harlem Center for Strings at Carnegie Hall, and the “Peace Concert” at Washington’s Library of Congress in 2003; a Chicago Symphony gala with Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma, and Itzhak Perlman performed in both Chicago and in New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2001; a special concert commemorating the 80th birthday of Isaac Stern at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2001, and his Galas with the NAC Orchestra featuring Itzhak Perlman (1999 and 2003), Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (2000), Yo-Yo Ma (2001 and 2004), Renée Fleming (2002) Kathleen Battle (2005) and a special 10th anniversary Gala that united Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Natalie MacMaster and Gil Shaham (2006).

As Music Director of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra from 1980 to 1987, Pinchas Zukerman restored the ensemble to financial stability, moved it to a new 2,000-seat, acoustically superb theatre, and brought it to world renown with a prestigious recording contract and several American and international tours.

Pinchas Zukerman also served as Music Director of the South Bank Festival in England from 1979 to 1981, Principal Guest Conductor of the Dallas Symphony’s International Summer Music Festival from 1991-1995 and the Dallas Symphony from 1993 to 1995, and Artistic Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Summer MusicFest, from 1996 to 1999.

Pinchas Zukerman regularly conducts and/or performs with the world’s finest orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, English Chamber Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Orchestras.

A frequent chamber music performer, Pinchas Zukerman has appeared worldwide with friends and colleagues who are luminaries of the music world, including Daniel Barenboim, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Itzhak Perlman, Ralph Kirshbaum, the Tokyo String Quartet, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Marc Neikrug and the late Jacqueline du Pré.

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1948, Pinchas Zukerman began musical training with his father, first on recorder, then clarinet, and ultimately violin and viola. At the age of eight, he began studying with Ilona Feher at the Israel Conservatory and the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. With the guidance of Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals, the support of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, and scholarships from the Juilliard School and Helena Rubinstein Foundation, he came to America in 1962 to study with Ivan Galamian at Juilliard. In 1967, Mr. Zukerman won First Prize in the twenty-fifth Leventritt International Competition, setting the stage for his solo career.

He holds an honorary doctorate from Brown University and an Achievement Award from the International Center in New York. He was presented with the King Solomon Award by the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, and in 1983, President Ronald Reagan awarded him a Medal of Arts for his leadership in the musical world. In October 2002, he became the first recipient of the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence at the National Arts Awards Gala in New York City.

January 2008