Lessons with Mr. Zukerman

When I arrived at Manhattan School of Music in the fall of 1995 to study with Pinchas Zukerman and Patinka Kopec, I knew the next few years would be defining ones in my life as a musician. However, those years were nothing like I’d ever anticipated.

My first lesson with Mr. Zukerman jolted me out of a lot of ideas I had about myself. I entered the studio wearing my most chic ensemble, a taupe double-breasted suit (from Penney’s, of course) with a floral tie and burgundy wing-tips. It was the 90s, I was in New York City, and I was destined to be the “next big thing” in the viola world. I put bow to string and began Bartok’s viola concerto, a piece that for the last year or more I’d destroyed the competition circuit all over Oklahoma and Kansas. I made it through the first eight bars when Mr. Zukerman, decked out in green sweatpants, stopped me. “When I close my eyes,” he said, “I hear nice things. But when I look at what you’re doing I have no idea how you’re making it work.” The viola went back into the case and the rest of that first lesson was spent with pencil in hand in place of bow. By the time I’d figured out how to hold the thing, raise it up and down using curling motions of my fingers, examined the way the right thumb completed a circle and itself curled and straightened, and made crisscrossing motions using my weak pinkie finger I was exhausted. And blissfully released until next week.

That first lesson should have been a clue. I wasn’t there to blast through repertoire, win competitions, or be a viola idol. I was to be rebuilt from basic fundamentals. It was difficult. I resisted and didn’t have enough maturity or humility to admit that this was exactly what I needed. There were tears. There was the frustration of doing well in the school orchestra auditions but falling miserably short at lessons. There was the frustration of enduring months of D-major scales and simple Kreutzer etudes. At least this is what I perceived. What was actually happening was that skill by skill, day by day, week by week I was building a vocabulary on my instrument. I was developing a concept of sound and a philosophy of efficiency.

By the time the first semester ended I was given a movement of Bach to learn. I took it home and planned my interpretation. Rubato here, color change here, senza vibrato here. Next lesson: the first measure of the heartbreaking d-minor Prelude reduced to half-bow (down), half-bow (up), whole bow (sustain!), return to frog (lightening pressure so as to not change tone quality), whole-bow to the tip. Again. Again. Every note, shift, bow change, and string crossing had a plan. FLAT HAIR! I had expected a deep and meaningful conversation about Bach, style, phrasing, love, life, and death. You know, “artistic” stuff. It wasn’t time for that yet.

I suppose all of that seems a bit dry. It certainly seemed tedious to me at the time. But when I look back, I never fail to be deeply touched and honored that an artist of Mr. Zukerman’s stature had the patience, time, and enormous energy to try to create from the bottom up a complete player out of me.

In one of my final lessons before graduating, Mr. Zukerman summed it up: “We don’t expect you to leave here and be done. What we’ve tried to do is give you a vocabulary to work with when you’re out in the world.” It took me a few more years to start putting it all together, but now, when confronted with a daunting new piece, I realize that performing every phrase is just a matter of going back to that vocabulary, stringing it together into sentences, and making music. Mr. Zukerman’s and Ms. Kopec’s attention to the long-term growth of their students has helped me become “the next biggest thing…onstage at Abravanel Hall (besides the piano)” where I get to play great music with amazing colleagues in a most beautiful part of the world. Thanks, Mr. Zukerman, and enjoy your time here in Utah.

Brant Bayless is the Principal Violist for Utah Symphony. Don’t miss Maestro Pinchas Zukerman conducting the Utah Symphony Nov. 6 – 7 on an all-Brahms program.