A voice in defence of Pinchas Zukerman

I am a professional violinist and I attended Mr Zuckerman’s online class last Friday. Mr Zuckerman first complimented the two young Violinists on their performance, before he said anything else. He asked questions of both girls such as: “who’s playing first?” & “Who decides who plays which part?” Those are not offensive remarks. When speaking to them about different things, he “assumed” they were Korean. For this assumption, I fault the person who facilitated the master class and told him which students he would be working with. That person should have informed him of their nationality-not because that would have any affect on his teaching, but then he would not have made any assumptions and could have couched his instruction in a different manner.

I don’t think Juilliard should have pulled his entire video and I’m going to be writing to them as well. They should have just pulled that segment instead of the whole thing. The other young artists he worked with were very good and for the most part, he did not say anything that was insensitive or out of place to them.

Mr Zuckerman is a very fine professional violinist and soloist. All of us who studied with ANY of the pedagogues at Juilliard or at any other conservatory have experienced a Master Teacher (& often more than one) who has an unusual way of expressing their teaching ideas. One of my experiences starred Mr Kenneth Goldsmith who recently was at Rice. That does not make them bad people and Mr Zuckerman certainly is not a bad person at all. Unfortunately, these two young ladies will have been educated by now, by those of the “woke” or “politically correct” crowd. They are NOT correct either nor do they have any idea of what is correct or common in our world.

The truth is that the professional musician world is not a place where musical sensitivity based on “wokeness” will ever be tolerated. We are highly trained and very proficient followers of our teachers and our conservatory training as well as our conductors and section leaders. Most of us do not let remarks of conductors or others get under our skin. It’s important to have developed a very good sense of yourself and your abilities and that you use that to promote healthy self-esteem. If you do not do this, you will be crippled by every suspected slight that comes your way. And if you are a musician, then you know how absolutely true this is and how undermining it can be if you do not have a good self-esteem.

I do not think we should be climbing on the bandwagon to be condemning of Mr Zuckerman or anyone else. Is he perfect? No. Does he have important musical teaching to impart? Yes. In fairness to him and everyone else who might be teaching during a Symposium that is online and not in person, there needs to be clear information on exactly whom they will be working with. Their ages, their experience, their circumstances of being featured as a performer, & the scope of the instructor’s responsibility and requirements for the instruction to be useful. That did not happen for Mr Zuckerman and I’m sorry that he was not better informed. That blame rests on Juilliard.

Sincerely,

LF