Even on a gray day, there is a feeling of serenity and warmth when you enter Eugenia Zukerman’s home overlooking the Hudson River and New York’s Riverside Park.
Such feelings are in keeping with the image of this internationally known flutist. Reviewers often describe Zukerman’s playing as graceful, eloquent, sensitive.
Zukerman, 47, has led a many-faceted life, as flutist, novelist, screenwriter, educator, wife and mother. The youngest of her two daughters has just gone off to college.
In addition to raising two daughters, Zukerman has had a prolific performing and recording career. She appears regularly with orchestras, solo or in duo recitals and this year is to give 40 to 50 concerts. For the last 13 years she has traveled around the country interviewing artists such as the late guitarist Andres Segovia and pianist Lili Kraus in her role as arts commentator for CBS “Sunday Morning” with Charles Kuralt. She celebrated 15 years with the show this month. She has written two novels, “Deceptive Cadence” (Viking, 1981) and “Taking the Heat” (Simon and Schuster, 1991) and is working on a third, and she has three screenplays to her credit.
Despite her busy schedule, Zukerman finds time to visit public schools and give master programs, convinced that because of cuts in arts funding, music in the schools must come from the outside. “I’m a real champion of outreach programs, being a musician (myself) because of an outreach program,” says Zukerman, referring to when she was 10 and the Hartford (Conn.) Symphony visited her school. “I remember the feeling of that day, hearing the sound of the flute-which was completely magical-and being transformed. And you have to say to yourself if that happened to me it can happen to other children. I want to make that possible for them.”
Born in Cambridge, Mass., Zukerman grew up in Hartford. Although she fell in love with the flute, she never gave up her other love, writing. Resisting the pressure to choose one art over the other, Zukerman entered Barnard College in New York studying English, acting and playing the flute. “Academics told me you will never be a writer if you play the flute. And the musicologists were saying you have to choose something.”
It was her flute teacher, Julius Baker, who convinced her to attend the Juilliard School and pursue both fields, saying she could get a job in an orchestra to support herself while writing the great American novel. “In today’s world, I would not say that to a music student,” Zukerman says. “It’s not that easy to get a job with an orchestra. Nor was it then, but it was more possible.”
While at Juilliard, she met violinist Pinchas Zukerman, who became her first husband and father of their two daughters, Arianna and Natalia. Zukerman continued to pursue her varied interests and in 1971, at age 25, won a Young Concert Artists Award competition, followed by a formal New York debut. Balancing a full-time career and a family was possible, she says, because of her life in the arts. “I could be a completely present mother and practice the flute in the house with them there and take them on tour with me,” Zukerman says. “For women who go to an office, it is a real challenge to be able to have enough time with a child. … I had real quality time with them on a daily basis all their lives and I still do.”
While admitting at times to feeling harried and pressured, Zukerman says that after her divorce in 1983, and in her new role as a single parent, she began to feel that “women are very privileged to be able to accomplish many tasks at once. It is the way we are brought up in the society, for whatever reasons.”
All of this reinforces Zukerman’s belief that we can create our own lives. She credits her mother, Shirley Rich, with having an influence on her thinking. A dancer and the first woman to be admitted to the City College School of Engineering in New York, her mother chose not to follow a career and spent her time raising a family. But she enabled her daughter to see the possibility of a life filled with a number of interests and options.
For Zukerman, all of these varied interests and passions fit in with her conviction that life is about becoming the most interesting person you can, a saying she attributes to Katharine Hepburn, someone she admires.
Zukerman has passed along these beliefs to her daughters, who, like their mother, have several talents and interests. “My youngest daughter is at Oberlin (College in Ohio). She is a fabulous guitarist, writes her own songs. She is also a writer and a terrific painter. I find myself saying to her what I was saying to myself: You will find a way to combine these things. You must absolutely develop your talents.”
This is a job that Zukerman has taken seriously, although she reveals that balancing various interests and talents involves “a certain torment. There were a few months this past spring when I didn’t write and I had time to have lunch with a friend. I was really very happy and thought it was good. But before I knew it, that parrot was on my shoulder saying `write it, write it’ and I couldn’t not do it. Women who are driven have a burden.”
Zukerman doesn’t seem inclined to scale down her interests. If anything, more elements have been added. A second marriage to film producer David Seltzer brought four of his children into the family. A third novel is in the germination stage (“. . . a mother/daughter story-I have no idea whether it will work and I am trying to be relaxed about it”). Then there are her interviews for “Sunday Morning,” a program she says is “the only network news program that presents the arts the way it does. It brings people into live performance in a way I don’t think any other show does.”
While performing around the country, as well as playing occasional concerts in Europe, Zukerman says she is committed to making a life with her family. She talks enthusiastically about a recent performance at the New York Public Library with her longtime musical partner, harpsichordist Anthony Newman. One of three or four concerts they do at the library each year, each program has a theme and the musicians talk about the pieces they are going to play, as well as read letters and documents from the era. Zukerman sees this as one way to make the arts accessible to people today.
Many musicians and orchestras are reaching out to schools and communities, she says, because they realize the effect music can have on people, especially children. “In a society like ours, where we are worried that values and morals are disappearing, music is a perfect way for a child to learn (them).”
What Zukerman sees is that classical music in this country is being forced to change. “People look at classical music as a dinosaur. Well, dinosaurs became extinct because they failed to adapt to a change in climate. I think it is possible to adapt to a change in the climate in America without compromising the arts.”
For Zukerman that requires communication between performer and audience, whether through pre-concert briefings or taking music into the schools.
“How do we solve the problem that we live in a visual society? Just ignore that and say `use your imagination’ when they are not used to using their imagination? How about finding a way to draw (the audience) in?”
While admitting she doesn’t have the answers to those questions, she’s looking for them. She believes she is at a crossroads in her life. “My children have just gone off, my father is gravely ill. Which puts me very much in touch with my own mortality. I feel, as (do) many women my age, that I want to age gracefully. I want to be one of those great old ladies. I want to have young friends, to be able to be supportive of my kids and other kids and play the flute until I can’t breathe anymore. I hope to have the grace to know when to stop.” She also intends to go on writing and to “find way to give back the many gifts I have been given.”
Talk about old age brings up women and aging, and Zukerman says she is grateful that writers like Betty Friedan and Gail Sheehy are there to help women deal with society’s prejudices about aging. “You cannot grow up in this society without aging being an issue for you. We are so youth- and beauty-oriented. ” She wonders when aging will become an issue for her with regard to the work she does with Kuralt on television, since that medium tolerates older men better than it does women.
“One of the beauties of aging is that you gather some perspective,” she says. “In my 20s and 30s I was hellbent on being a good musician and writing. It was about validation. When you get to be my age, if you don’t know who you are, if you are still out there scrambling, you haven’t learned anything.”
