DISCUSSION: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Improvisation in the classical world and beyond, including contributions from David Arditti, James Lewitzke, James Ross and Steve Vasta.
SPONSORED: CD Spotlight. A Very Joyous Disc - Brahms arranged by Kenneth Woods impresses Alice McVeigh.
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American violinist and conductor Paul Zukofsky was born in Brooklyn, New York on 22 October 1943. His mother was musician and composer Celia Thaew and his father was the American objectivist poet Louis Zukovsky. Paul Zukofsky first played in public at the age of nine, playing the first movement of Mozart's Violin Concerto No 3, and when he was thirteen gave a recital at Carnegie Hall. He studied at Juilliard with Ivan Galamian.
During his long career, specialising in contemporary music, he made more than sixty recordings, working with, performing and recording the music of many twentieth century composers. He also created his own record label, Musical Observations Inc.
He was executor, guardian and copyright contact for his parents' works, and was also head of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles from 1992 until 1996. He was also involved in the relocation of Arnold Schoenberg's archive from Los Angeles to Vienna in 1998.
Zukofsky gave the first performance of Philip Glass' Violin Concerto in 1987, and also took the title role in the 1976 recording of the same composer's opera Einstein on the Beach.
He wrote On Violin Harmonics in Perspectives of New Music, reprinted in Perspectives on Notation and Performance, edited by Benjamin Boretz and Edward T Cone.
Paul Zukofsky died in Hong Kong on 6 June 2017 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, aged seventy-three.