Paul Zukofsky

Paul Zukofsky (October 22, 1943 – June 6, 2017) was an American violinist and conductor known for his work in the field of contemporary classical music.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Paul Zukofsky was the only child of the American objectivist poet Louis Zukofsky and Celia Thaew Zukofsky, a musician and composer.

Both parents were children of Yiddish-speaking immigrants from what was then the western Russian Empire (now Belarus).

Revealing a precocious talent, he began taking music lessons at age three, soon concentrated on the violin, and at seven became a student of Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School of Music.

He made his first orchestral appearance in 1952 with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and a formal debut recital at Carnegie Hall in 1956.

The New York Times praised his technique, noting he had gone through "a difficult program without turning a hair or moving a facial muscle" and described him as a "deadpan bundle of talent."

Further Carnegie Hall recitals followed in 1959 and 1961.

He was one of the original Creative Associates at the founding of the Center for Creative and Performing Arts, SUNY Buffalo, in 19674.

Louis Zukofsky published a fictionalized biography of his son as a young violinist, Little (1970), which includes an account of the ten-year-old Paul Zukofsky playing for the poet Ezra Pound, who was then incarcerated in St. Elizabeths prison-asylum in Washington, D.C.

While he performed and recorded a broad range of classical music, Zukofsky had little interest in pursuing the typical career of a violin virtuoso and gravitated toward music he felt was underappreciated.

As one succinct description puts it: "From his earliest years he was fascinated by ultramodern music and developed maximal celerity, dexterity, and alacrity in manipulating special techniques, in effect transforming the violin into a multimedia instrument beyond its normal capacities."

He is best known for his performances of and collaborations with many of the key composers of contemporary classical music, such as Milton Babbitt, Arthur Berger, Easley Blackwood, Henry Brant, John Cage, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Peter Mennin, Krzysztof Penderecki, Walter Piston, J. K. Randall, Wallingford Riegger, Giacinto Scelsi, Artur Schnabel, Roger Sessions, Ralph Shapey, Harvey Sollberger, Stefan Wolpe, Charles Wuorinen, and Iannis Xenakis.

He gave world premieres of concertos by Roger Sessions (for violin, cello and orchestra), Charles Wuorinen (for amplified violin and orchestra), Morton Feldman (for violin and orchestra), Philip Glass, and the Scottish composer Iain Hamilton, among others.

Over the course of the 1970s, Zukofsky increasingly devoted his energies to conducting.

In the mid-1970s Zukofsky initiated what proved to be a long-standing musical association with Iceland.

These include some notable renditions of classics, such as Paganini's Twenty-four Caprices and Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Violin. In 1974 he recorded an anthology of new American violin music composed between 1940 and 1970, and the following year interpretations of classic rags.

However, his primary focus was on contemporary classical music and with always an interest in championing work he believed was underappreciated, such as that of Artur Schnabel and Armin Loos.

As the copyright holder for his parents' work, Zukofsky gained a reputation as a restrictive and contentious guardian of his property rights, joining a list of literary estates that have taken a controlling and often confrontational position with regard to scholars, of which perhaps the most notorious has been the James Joyce estate.

In 1975 Zukofsky founded Musical Observations, a nonprofit corporation to support neglected but worthwhile projects, including the recording label CP2, which continues to make available many recordings for which he performed, conducted and edited.

Zukofsky appeared as the character of Albert Einstein in Philip Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach in 1976, and performed on a number of other Glass recordings.

He also had a significant collaborative relationship with John Cage.

From 1976 to 1977, Zukofsky was a resident visitor at the Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, participating in research on timing in musical performance.

As a teacher, Zukofsky taught at many major music schools and programs, including the Juilliard School (where he taught chamber music, conducting and violin), the New England Conservatory, the Berkshire Music Center, the Manhattan School of Music, and Stony Brook University.

They worked together and recorded the violin version of Cage's Cheap Imitation (1977), and Cage composed the demanding Freeman Etudes – Books I and II (Etudes I–XVII, 1977–1980) specifically for Zukofsky.

In 1977, he led the Zukofsky Seminars in Orchestral Music offering the opportunity for music students to perform large scale works.

From 1978 to 1987 he was conductor of the Colonial Symphony Orchestra (Madison, New Jersey).

These evolved into the founding in 1985 of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Iceland (Sinfóníuhljómsveit Æskunnar) of which he was Principal Conductor and Music Director until 1993, giving a large number of Icelandic premieres of primarily 20th century orchestral music.

Zukofsky served as artistic director for the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) Summergarden concert series from 1987 to 1992, and he was program coordinator of the American Composer Series at the Kennedy Center from 1980 until 1990.

In recognition of his long-standing association with and contributions to Icelandic music, Zukofsky received the Minningarverðlaun D.V. (Cultural Achievement Award in Music) in 1988, as well as the Knight's Cross, Icelandic Order of the Falcon by the President of Iceland in 1990.

From 1992 to 1996, Zukofsky was director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at the University of Southern California.

During this time a dispute between Schoenberg's heirs and the university concerning the mission of the institute resulted in the relocation and rehousing of the Schoenberg's archive at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, Austria, in 1998.

Zukofsky recorded extensively as both violinist and conductor.

In 2006 he moved permanently to Asia, initially to Bangkok and then for the last decade of his life in Hong Kong, where he continued to be musically active and also worked on his inimitable critical writings, mostly on music.

In 2009 he published a provocative open letter online discouraging students and scholars from publishing on his father's work.

The letter evidences his strong animus against academics and suspicion of their motives.

On the other hand, he kept the considerable body of his father's work in print and supported the publication of several volumes of correspondence, so that there has been far better access to the work than at any time during his father's lifetime.

Zukofsky's narrow interpretation of fair use has been strongly contested by legal scholars.

Zukofsky's cosmopolitan interests included a life-long fascination with East Asia, not least its food.

He did a significant amount of recording in Japan and had long associations, especially with composers Jo Kondo and Yuji Takahashi.

Zukofsky died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma on June 6, 2017, in Hong Kong.