George Zukerman, internationally renowned bassoon soloist, recipient of the Order of Canada, the Order of BC and a National Arts Centre Award, among others, slides a disc into his CD player. I’m with George in the South Surrey home he shares with his partner, Erika, listening to a recording of Mozart, Bassoon Concerto K 191. Jörg Faerber is conducting the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra, George is the soloist. He’s entranced. His eyes are closed and he’s waving his arms in time with the music.
“It sings out like a tenor or a soprano,” he says of the featured instrument, the bassoon. “Now here comes the solo… here’s some of the trills that Erika loves… then it gets very dramatic, more intense, more drive. Mozart extracted every ounce of intensity from what the bassoon could do,” he says, his eyes still closed.
The bassoon has a low, deep sound not unlike that of the cello. It’s usually part of the orchestra’s woodwind section. It is not an instrument one thinks of as a showstopper, but George changed all that in the ’60s, ’70s and beyond, travelling the world as a virtuoso bassoon soloist and introducing international audiences to the instrument’s subtle complexities.
“I released the bassoon from penal servitude in the background of the orchestra,” he says with a laugh.
The CD plays on, shifting from allegro to andante as we continue our conversation.
George officially retired years ago. He says he gave away his bassoon, like a pet, to a good home and, although he’s given up performing, he has doubled down on his other passion – his other “hat” he calls it – introducing the public to good music.
“My professional life, aside from playing, was organizing tours, the impresario side of my existence. Two hats. I never knew which one I was wearing,” he says.
Today, those two hats have become one. For the past four years, he’s been working with a boutique Vancouver tour company organizing and hosting its classical-music river cruises. The latest, this month, is a trip down the Rhine. Fourteen days, 10 cities and, at each stop, the guests are treated to a concert. He shows me the itinerary.
“The trick of these tours is to find public concerts happening in Strasbourg or Zurich or Amsterdam on exactly the day the cruise ship ties up,” he says leafing through the schedule.
And as a special treat, the six on-board musicians will be writing a Rhine Rhapsody as the boat travels down river. It will be premiered on the last day of the cruise. The tours are always sold out, he tells me proudly.
George is preparing an even bigger event for 2020, organizing a tour of 13 BC communities – Parksville, Abbotsford, Kelowna and the like – to commemorate Beethoven’s 250th birthday.
“Everyone thinks Beethoven is this great romantic, who solved the world’s problems with great music through the drama, the intensity and the ferocity of his latter works. They are profound, but the earlier stuff is equally significant.”
George will be presenting pieces Beethoven wrote between the ages of 18 and 25.
“I call it Beethoven Before the Scowl,” he says. “Health permitting, I will be doing the commentary. I’m not there to bore people. If I have a good story to tell, I may add it.”
George is good at telling stories. As a young man, he considered journalism as a career and although he eventually pursued music, he never lost his affinity for the written word.
He removes the Mozart CD from the player and fires up the computer. I’m now listening to George’s audio files, a collection of memories written and delivered in his own melodious voice. I’m particularly struck with a cut called “The Audition.” It documents his 1951 meeting with Leonard Bernstein when George, unsure about a career path, introduced himself to the principal bassoonist of the newly-formed Israeli Philharmonic then visiting New York. The bassoonist invited him to join the orchestra. “But you’ll have to play for Lenny,” the bassoonist warned him.
Later that evening, after a celebratory dinner, George’s wife repeated the mantra. “You’ll have to play for Lenny.”
“Was I in good enough shape? I really didn’t know,” he remembers.
The following morning, he arrived at Carnegie Hall bright and early for his 10 o’clock audition, determined to warm up and be ready. After all, he had to play for Lenny.
The recording continues.
“Alone in the green room, I played and played and played and, finally feeling reasonably ready for whatever was to come, I sat and waited. Only then did I look at my watch. It was already 10:30. I began to worry. What was the procedure? I played some more excerpts but, by 10:45, I concluded the job must have already been filled or perhaps I had arrived a day early. Reluctantly, I pulled my instrument to pieces and began to clean it out. Just before I was going to close the case, there came a gentle knock at the door. I opened the door to Leonard Bernstein standing there with a puckish smile on his face. ‘I’ve been listening to you for the past 45 minutes; you have the job.’ ‘You heard all the stops and starts?’ I said. ‘I was just warming up.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘good stuff.’”
And with that, George and his first wife moved to Israel to play in the Philharmonic. In 1953, they moved again to British Columbia, where his tenure with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra was cut short by a musician’s strike.
“I led the strike,” he says. “Not for more money, but for more work. We only had 23 weeks. We wanted 26.” They settled for 24. When George attempted to re-negotiate his contract the following year, he found his position already filled.
“I didn’t have a job. I had to find something else to do and I had always wanted to play solo. Here was my chance.”
Striking out on his own, he travelled the world, winning rave reviews and building up a reputation. I leaf through his scrapbook of pictures and press clippings. China, Australia, the Caribbean… it’s an impressive resume. I ask him about South Africa and Cynthia, a rescue elephant he met while touring in the back country.
“Here’s the Canadian bassoonist playing for the African trumpeter,” he says pulling up a faded photograph.
“I played Tchaikovsky for Cynthia. She stood there and raised her trunk and acknowledged me. She allowed me to nuzzle her. She was very affectionate. I always liked to play for animals.”
And for people, too. He was becoming known as the Great Magician of the Bassoon; one commentator called him the High Priest of the Bassoon.
“I always strove for the lyrical side of it, which is why I became a soloist because I had something, I think, to express. Lyricism is an expression of the soul.”
In addition to performing, he was also wearing his impresario’s hat, organizing concert societies on a subscription basis, so smaller Canadian communities could afford to bring in professional musicians. In its heyday, his company, Overture Concerts, provided 70 Canadian communities with over 400 concerts a year.
He visited the USSR eight times as a self-managed soloist, not only performing but arranging reciprocal tours for Soviet and Canadian musicians. He ran interference. When Air Canada delayed his guests’ instruments in Halifax for a concert in Swift Current (a shipment of lobsters took precedence), George had to urgently find four concert harps somewhere, anywhere, in western Canada. He found them.
Later, he sent musicians to Canada’s northern communities hopping from one remote school to another by small plane, often in frightening conditions.
“My biggest love was the North. It was a wonderful experience watching the kids’ eyes light up,” he says of the 15 years he spent with the project. “We came in and we played, and they played with us. These were not concerts; they were links between societies. It was one of the few things that came to the North that was not confrontational,” he continues. “Every survey, every experiment from the South always came up to show the northern communities how to change their lives to be more like us, to make Inuvik more like Medicine Hat. Not needed. Let Inuvik be Inuvik,” he says emphatically.
And now, in his 92nd year, in addition to stickhandling his river cruises and his upcoming Beethoven tour, George is about to embark on his third mission – introducing Canadian communities to good music once again.
“I’ve been spending my life helping build audiences in these towns,” he says, “and the way to do that is to build a subscription base. ‘Do you want music in your community?’ ‘Yes, it would be wonderful.’ Good. Form a committee, run a membership. If you’ve got 100 members paying a $100, you’ve got $10,000 in the bank. You can do wonders with that. I’ll show them how to run a membership campaign, but I won’t take a commission. I’ll take a fee.”
And if they turn down his guidance after a year or so?
“That’s fine. The idea is they should do it on their own,” he says.
Meanwhile, Erika hovers in the hallway awaiting the arrival of her mid-day student. An accomplished orchestral violinist, Erika met George at an after-party in Brandon, Manitoba 30 years ago. He had just completed a performance, and Erika was in the audience.
“She liked my trills,” says George. Erika concurs. “I like people being musical, and what impressed me about him was he played very musically.”
The couple enjoys a comfortable life together. True, George finds it difficult to walk great distances, but energized by his raft of current projects, he seems unperturbed by his mobility issue. Troubling yes, but not disabling.
“As long as I’ve got something interesting to keep me going, I can overcome a lot of things,” he says.
And there’s more. He shows me an outline and chapter headings for yet another project, an autobiography he has written called Concerto for Two Hats. Completed and awaiting publication, it’s comprised largely of anecdotal memories, many of which I’ve been listening to, written in George’s distinct and entertaining style.
Leafing through his scrapbooks and listening to his music, I keep thinking about the many turning points in George’s career or, for that matter, in anyone’s career, about how we often enter an event or circumstance which, in retrospect, becomes a pivotal moment. George says the day he left the Vancouver Symphony to strike out on his own as a soloist was the most momentous day in his life.
And what would have happened, I ask, had he not played for Lenny?
“I would have arrived in Vancouver two years earlier, stayed in New York and become a freelance musician, or quit music to go into journalism,” he says. “The permutations are unlimited.”
Given his indubitable spirit, I think he would have done just fine.
Sidebar
If you were to meet your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give him?
“Go back and practice, instead of expecting things to happen by instinct. I was pretty good, but I could have been incredibly good technically.”
What or who has influenced you the most and why?
“Isaac Stern because he showed me how to trill, how to make a beautiful phrase and how to end it with a beautiful, comfortable conclusion. I met him many times. He was on the telephone endlessly.”
What are you most grateful for?
“Erika. She made it happen. And my general health. I have a lot of mobility problems, but they’re tiddly compared to what other people have.”
What does success mean to you?
“Fulfillment of a project and that could be anything from a beautiful concerto to a satisfactory conclusion of a concert or a satisfactory cruise. Everything gets wrapped up and closed off as it’s supposed to be. Completing the circle.”
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