Pinchas Zukerman was born in Tel Aviv on 16 July 1948 to parents who had survived the Holocaust. He began on the recorder and clarinet before taking up the violin at the age of eight, studying first at the Israel Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. On the encouragement of Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals he moved to New York to study with Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School. He shared first prize at the 1967 Leventritt Competition, which launched his international career. He has worked as violinist, violist and conductor, serving as music director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and, from 1998 to 2015, of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra.

Zukerman is among the few musicians of his generation with an equally strong reputation on violin and viola. His long-running partnerships with Itzhak Perlman, Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pré produced a large body of chamber recordings and broadcast performances that shaped how a generation heard the repertoire. He has recorded more than a hundred albums and received two Grammy Awards. Teaching has been a constant thread: he founded the National Arts Centre Young Artists Programme and has taught for many years at the Manhattan School of Music, where he pioneered distance-learning masterclasses.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinchas_Zukerman