Renowned violinist apologises for remarks about Asians
Anger after he invokes racist stereotypes in feedback to sisters of Japanese descent
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A 2016 photo of Pinchas Zukerman in performance. The celebrated violinist and conductor angered many of the roughly 100 participants in a masterclass last Friday when he invoked racist stereotypes about Asians.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
NEW YORK • A masterclass by renowned violinist Pinchas Zukerman was supposed to be the highlight of a recent virtual symposium for young musicians hosted by the Juilliard School.
Instead, Zukerman angered many of the roughly 100 participants in the class last Friday when he invoked racist stereotypes about Asians, leading Juilliard to decide not to share a video of his masterclass afterwards with participants, as it had initially intended.
At one point, Zukerman told a pair of students of Asian descent that their playing was too perfect and that they needed to add soya sauce, according to two participants in the class.
Zukerman's remarks were widely denounced by musicians and teachers, with many saying they reinforced ugly stereotypes facing artists of Asian descent in the music industry.
Juilliard tried to distance itself from the matter, describing Zukerman as a guest instructor and saying his "insensitive and offensive cultural stereotypes" did not represent the school's values.
Zukerman, an Israeli-American, apologised on Monday for what he called his "culturally insensitive" comments.
"In Friday's masterclass, I was trying to communicate something to these two incredibly talented young musicians, but the words I used were culturally insensitive," he said in a statement.
"I'm writing to the students personally to apologise. I am sorry that I made anyone uncomfortable. I cannot undo that, but I offer a sincere apology. I learned something valuable from this, and I will do better in the future."
Zukerman is a celebrated violinist and conductor whose career has spanned five decades. He was the biggest name at the Juilliard event, known as the Starling-DeLay Violin Symposium, which attracts promising young musicians, many of them teenagers. He made the remarks while offering feedback to a pair of sisters of Japanese descent.
After the sisters played a duet, Zukerman told them they should try bringing more of a singing quality to their playing, according to participants in the class.
When he said that he knew Koreans did not sing, one of the sisters interrupted to say that they were not Korean, adding that they were partly of Japanese descent. Zukerman replied by saying that people in Japan did not sing either, according to participants.
His remarks prompted an outcry among Asian and Asian-American musicians, with some sharing stories on social media about their experiences dealing with stereotypes and bias.
Violinist Hyeyung Yoon, who last year founded Asian Musical Voices of America, an alliance of artists, said Zukerman's remarks represented a type of thinking that "dehumanises a group of people without actually getting to know who they are".
"It's so prevalent in classical music, but also prevalent in the larger society," she said in an interview.
Violinist Keiko Tokunaga said she and many other Asian musicians had heard comments similar to Zukerman's.
"We are often described as emotionless or we just have no feelings and we are just technical machines," she said in an interview. "And that is very offensive, because we are as human as anyone else on the planet."
NYTIMES
