Eugenia Zukerman is a Pied Piper of the flute. Where her notes go, audiences and critics happily follow.
One of the world’s great flutists, she lacks the egoistic affectation typical of musical celebrities.
Her telephone voice is unpretentious, enthusiastic, honest and funny.
“I just moved to Greenwich Village,” she says recently, her words cascading in a verbal freefall. “It’s very European here. People buy their groceries on a daily basis. You can get anywhere by subway. You can see friends at night, go to concerts, movies, theater — and all those crazy New York events.”
Zukerman, 60, made her debut on the flute in 1971 to rave reviews and has soared ever since.
Her major orchestral and festival appearances — solo or with other artists — include with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and Aspen Musical Festival.
In 1998 she became music director of the International Vail Valley Music Festival, a job that consumes a large chunk of her summers.
Her discography reads like a tutorial in classical and contemporary music: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Vivaldi and many more.
She could have been content with her flute, basking in its silver glow and the crowd’s adulation. But there are no rests in her life.
The on-air arts critic for CBS Sunday Morning since 1981, Zukerman has interviewed more than 300 subjects. Most are musicians — Paul McCartney, Yo Yo Ma, Isaac Stern, and up-and-coming jazz artists.
She compares the interviewing process to “chamber music,” and waits for the confusion to settle.
“Basically I’m very curious. I ask questions, and the answer will lead me to the next question. I research my subject in advance, but I’ve never sat down with notes, not once in my 350 interviews. They get in my way.”
An author, Zukerman has written two fiction and two nonfiction books.
Her most recent work is “In My Mother’s Closet: An Invitation to Remember.” She taps female celebrities’ reminiscences of poking through their mothers’ clothes, possessions and scents.
Going through a mother’s closet “is a fairly universal thing little girls do,” Zukerman says. “Once my daughters were visiting me and they reminisced about their explorations. I did it when I was young. I asked my mother, who is 91, if she did it and she said yes.
“The book is not about clothing or fashion. It’s about the connection between mothers and daughters.”
Her editor wanted interviews with famous women. “I was happy to do real people,” she says, laughing, “but I ended up with extraordinary interviews. The creative part was writing the narratives in the voice of the person I spoke with.”
Born in Cambridge, Mass., she describes the household as lively. “There was lots of music in the house.” Her father was an inventor who later moved the family, including Eugenia’s two sisters, to Connecticut.
She attended public schools, “which were terrific. It was a rich experience.”
These were the halcyon days of the public school system, when music, drama and the arts still flourished.
Zukerman first heard the flute in one of those classrooms. Scholarships enabled her to study with private teachers. She earned early admission to Barnard College and majored in English.
“I switched to the Julliard School of Music halfway through at the urging of my flute teacher,” she says. “She said, ‘Play music now and then you can write the Great American Novel.’ I liked the game plan.”
Her teacher had excellent intuition.
In 1971 Zukerman won the Young Concert Artists Award and made her formal New York debut. “Music has such power to move us,” she says. “It’s so much more efficient than language. One musical phrase can move you to tears. You could read a hundred or a thousand words before you felt the same emotion.”
The CBS Morning position arrived like a bolt from the sky. “I got a call from Shad Northshield [creator of the show]. He said, ‘I hear you play the flute. I have a job for you that you’re going to love.’ It was one of those wonderful things.”
Because her two daughters Natalia and Arianna were young, Zukerman almost declined. “I struggle to keep my life in balance, but I feel privileged that I have a number of interests.” Her days are as varied as the music she plays.
“They really depend on what needs to be done. I wake up, exercise — I now belong to a club,” she says, dotting the last word with mock pretentiousness. “I write. I’m always working on things for the Vail Festival, and I’m usually working on something for CBS.”
She regrets that CBS Sunday Morning has cut back on its “high art” segments. She now does about six stories a year.
In 1983, Zukerman attended the Sundance Film Festival because her friend had entered a screenplay based on Zukerman’s first novel, “Deceptive Cadence.”
“It was one of five scripts picked for the competition,” she says, her soft voice enlarging with excited memories. “I got to work with Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack and legendary screenwriter Waldo Salt.
“Oddly enough, my marriage had ended that summer. One of the people I was working with at Sundance said, ‘I know a great guy in Los Angeles. He’s a screenwriter with four children.'”
Zukerman laughs again.
“I said no way, no thanks.”
The man in question was David Seltzer, who wrote the screenplay for “The Omen” and is the writer-producer of the NBC mini-series “Revelations.”
Fortunately, he rejected her rejection.
“He came to New York anyway,” Zukerman says. “I was playing a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. He couldn’t get into the concert but he stayed outside and heard me play.
“Then we went on what I guess you’d call a blind date. There was an instant connection.” That was 21 years ago.