‘Play to the exit sign!’ - Pinchas Zukerman: A matter of time

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Flying to Dallas, Texas, to meet Pinchas Zukerman in February feels akin to stepping into a history book. Here, in a part of the US shaped by oil-tycoon wealth and the cowboys of the Wild West, I have to blink twice as he emerges from his hotel, eyes sparkling above a blue surgical face mask, with a violin–viola case slung over his shoulder. This is a man whom I first heard perform when I was a toddler in the 1980s, when my parents played me videotapes of his duets with the equally esteemed violinist Itzhak Perlman. Now here he is, standing next to me as we prepare to share a ride to Meadows School of the Arts at Dallas’s Southern Methodist University (SMU), courtesy of the school’s chair of strings and director of chamber music, Aaron Boyd. Zukerman will be resuming masterclasses, chamber music projects and concerts that kicked off in November 2021 and are set to continue with his week-long termly visits to the school over the next two to three years, alongside his 2021–3 partnership with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO)…