Pinchas Zukerman To Perform

World-renowned musician Pinchas Zukerman, Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, will conduct and perform as violin soloist in concerts in at the Kelowna Community Theatre on Saturday, November 13 at 8pm, and at the Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre on Sunday, November 14 at 2pm, when the NAC Orchestra comes to British Columbia for a ten-day tour. The concerts are presented by the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra.

Ticket prices are $55, $45 and $35 and can be purchased through the Okanagan Symphony’s website at www.okanagansymphony.com, or by calling Ticketmaster in Kelowna at 250-860-1470 or Ticketseller in Vernon at 250-549-7469.

Audiences will hear Pinchas Zukerman, a two-time Grammy Award winner and one of the most famous violinists of the past century, play Mozart’s “Haffner” Serenade in D minor, a charming and virtuosic divertimento. Zukerman will also conduct Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C minor. Johannes Brahms considered the symphony to be the very apogee of orchestral music, and it took him 20 years to muster the nerve to attempt this first symphony. The magnificent score he produced is probably the greatest first symphony ever written. The mighty opening bars of the first movement herald a work of enormous scope, power and impact, followed by a more relaxed and noble second movement. The third movement offers some of Brahms’s most exquisite solo writing – intimate in mood, relaxed, the orchestral colours painted in pastels – before the Finale crowns the symphony with the grandest movement of all.

The National Arts Centre Orchestra concert opens the NAC-commissioned orchestration of Bringing the Tiger Down From the Mountain II by Canadian composer Alexina Louie. This 5-minute work requiring enormous dexterity was originally composed for cello and piano, and has now been arranged for full orchestra. It features NAC Orchestra Juno Award-winning principal cello Amanda Forsyth, who maintains an active international touring schedule as a soloist together with her orchestral career. Vancouver-born composer Alexina Louie is one of three composers named as recipients of the National Arts Centre’s Composer Awards of $75,000.

While on Tour in BC, the National Arts Centre Orchestra is presenting over 80 educational events in addition to its public concerts. One of these is a student matinee in Kelowna on November 14 led by the NAC Orchestra’s Principal Youth and Family Conductor Boris Brott. Audiences in BC and anywhere in the world can follow the BC Tour on the NAC’s performing arts educational website.

The National Arts Centre Orchestra British Columbia Tour is supported by Major Partner CN, which has a 90-year history in BC. The National Post is the Tour’s National Media Partner. Special funding for tour educational activities is generously provided by Yamaha Canada, Alcan-Kitimat Works, and donors and sponsors of the National Youth and Education Trust.

Pinchas Zukerman - Music Director, National Arts Centre Orchestra

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. He is equally respected as a violinist, violist, conductor, teacher and chamber musician. Since his appointment as Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in 1998, Mr. Zukerman has taken an interest in virtually every aspect of Ottawa’s artistic community while continuing his international career.

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, Montreal Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Orchestras.

Pinchas Zukerman's discography contains over 100 titles, and has earned him 21 Grammy nominations and two Grammy awards. His most recent recording at the National Arts Centre was nominated for a 2004 Juno Award.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1948, Pinchas Zukerman studied music with Ilona Feher and, in 1962, came to America with the support of Isaac Stern, Pablo Casals, and the America-Israel and Helena Rubenstein Foundations. He began his studies at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian, and in 1967 was named first-prize winner of the 25th Leventritt Competition.

Maestro Zukerman was presented with the King Solomon Award by the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and, in 1983, President 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.