Biography
Version Selection: English French Portuguese Condensed
Bernard Zinck, concert violinist and recording artist, is on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee after serving as Violin Professor at the University of New Mexico. He also teaches at the Merit School of Music in Chicago.
He began his musical studies at 5 and entered the Paris Conservatory at 15. He left it three years later with a slew of first prizes, in ear training, violin and chamber music. Demanding teachers like Gérard Poulet and Geneviève Joy-Dutilleux enabled him to reach an outstanding level of technical excellence and instilled in him an acute sense of rigor and musical integrity.
Admitted to the Juilliard School of Music as a Fulbright scholar, he finished his B.M. and M.M. degrees after only four years of studies. This academic training was crowned by a Doctorate degree received from Temple University in Philadelphia. His thesis on The Chevalier de Saint-George – an eighteenth-century French Violinist – makes him a knowledgeable scholar on the French School of Violin in the “Age of Enlightenment”.
His career began when he won the 1992 Yehudi Menuhin Trust Award in Paris. His scintillating recordings of “Szymanowski's Complete Works for Violin and Piano” and the “Live From France Album”, have won him the reputation of an expert interpreter of impressionistic music. Even though he has a close affinity with the works of the European nationalist composers of the early twentieth century, he refuses any label, equally at ease in a repertoire ranging from Bach to Barber.
An increasingly international performer, Bernard Zinck made his Japan debut in 2001 at the Oji Hall in Tokyo and in 2004, was invited to perform in Seoul, Korea at Sahmyook University International Music Festival. He has concertized extensively both as a chamber musician and soloist in Europe, the United States, Central and South America in numerous venues and festivals among which: the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Théâtre Impérial in Compiègne, Les Flâneries de Reims, Radio-France Montpellier (France), Brighton Arts (U.K.), the Salzbourg Mozarteum (Austria), the Liszt Academy in Budapest (Hungary), Szymanowski Festival in Zakopane (Poland), the National Gallery and the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Bowdoin, the Santa Fe Concert Association. He has appeared as guest soloist with many orchestras: the New Mexico Symphony, the Princeton Chamber Players, the Orquesta Sinfonica de la Universidad de Chihuahua, the Porto Alegre, Unisinos and Caxias and Camargo Guarnieri Symphony Orchestras in Brazil, the Hungarian National Philharmonic, the Bohemia Symphony, the Radio-Television Orchestra of Romania, the New Opera Di Roma Orchestra and the Orchestre National de la Garde Républicaine in Paris.
Residing in the Chicago area, Bernard Zinck has appeared on Chicago numerous concert series: Dame Myra Hess at the Cultural Center, Rush Hour at St. James Cathedral, St. James Cathedral Concerts, Cube, The Alliance Française, and was featured with members of the Chicago Chamber Musicians on WFMT “Live from Studio One”.
Bernard Zinck's violin playing is neither a gratuitous display of pyrotechnics, nor a self-indulgent outpouring of emotion. It is an ever-renewed quest for authenticity and truth. "Impeccable accuracy of pitch", "formidable technique" are recurrent press quotes. The Strad Magazine has praised his "round and opulent tone”, his "vibrato bringing moments of sheer ecstasy”, while Fanfare Magazine is impressed by the "singing, sensuous, sumptuous, shimmering” quality of his playing, which the French Figaro sums up in the glowing expression: "violon solaire”.
Doctor Zinck is also very active as a pedagogue. He has served on the faculty of the Köln Summer Institute in Montepulciano (Italy) and is regularly invited to conduct Master Classes and residencies in Universities and Conservatories throughout the United States, Brazil, Mexico and Europe.
Since 2002, Bernard Zinck plays on a Giovanni Battista Rogeri violin, dated 1690 – a purchase made possible with the support of the Bass family.