Conductor Emeritus

Pinchas Zukerman

Last updated: August 19, 2024

Pinchas Zukerman has remained a phenomenon in the world of music for over four decades. His musical genius, prodigious technique and unwavering artistic standards are a marvel to audiences and critics. Devoted to the next generation of musicians, he has inspired younger artists with his magnetism and passion. His enthusiasm for teaching has resulted in innovative programs in London, New York, China, Israel and Ottawa. The name Pinchas Zukerman is equally respected as a violinist, violist, conductor, pedagogue and chamber musician.

Pinchas Zukerman's 2016-2017 season, his eighth as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and his second as Artist-in-Association with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, includes over 100 concerts worldwide. In January 2017, he served as Artistic Director of the Winter Festival for three weeks of concerts and educational residency activities with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Guest conducting and soloist engagements include the Cleveland Orchestra and Boston, Pittsburgh and Montreal Symphonies, plus overseas appearances with the Berlin and Israel Philharmonics, the Camerata Salzburg, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Korean Chamber Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Miyazaki Festival Orchestra. European recitals with pianist Yefim Bronfman and chamber concerts with the Zukerman Trio round out the season.

Over the last decade, Mr. Zukerman has become equally regarded as a conductor and instrumentalist, leading many of the world's top ensembles in a wide variety of the orchestral repertoire's most demanding works. A devoted and innovative pedagogue, Mr. Zukerman chairs the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music, where he has pioneered the use of distance-learning technology in the arts. In Canada, where he served as Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra from 1999-2015, he established the NAC Institute for Orchestra Studies and the Summer Music Institute, encompassing the Young Artists, Conductors and Composers Programs. He currently serves as Conductor Emeritus of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, as well as Artistic Director of its Young Artist Program.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1948, Pinchas Zukerman came to America in 1962, where he studied at The Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian. He has been awarded the Medal of Arts and the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence and was appointed as the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative's first instrumentalist mentor in the music discipline. Mr. Zukerman's extensive discography contains over 100 titles and has earned him two Grammy awards and 21 nominations. Recent releases include Brahms's Symphony No. 4 and Double Concerto with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and cellist Amanda Forsyth, recorded in live performances at Ottawa's Southam Hall, and an album of works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Youth sticks with some people… Zukerman seems the forever-young virtuoso: expressively resourceful, infectiously musical, technically impeccable, effortless. As usual, it was a joy to be in his musical company.” 
- The Los Angeles Times

 

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