Joan Zucker, cellist

Zucker is a versatile musician who has taught extensively (cello, recorder, voice, orchestra, chamber music, theory, composition and improvisation), both privately and at various institutions including U.C. Santa Cruz, Ithaca College, and UNM. A native New Yorker, she holds music degrees from Bennington and Ithaca Colleges.

Zucker feels privileged to play on a Benjamin Banks cello made in Salisbury, England in 1788. She lives in Albuquerque with her teenage son, and spends as much time outdoors as possible. The month she spent trekking around the Annapurna Range in Nepal was one of the highlights of her life.

Photos by Joe Zoeckler

Read on for a more personal and detailed biography adapted from a NMSO Program Book that includes quotes by Zucker.

Zucker, grew up in New York City in a family of musically talented physicians and scientists for whom musical education was a priority.  All four children were sent to the School of Musical Education where she studied everything from piano and recorder to music theory and choral singing in their eight year certificate program.  She went to high school at the New Lincoln School – another place where music study was an important part of the curriculum – and there she wrote a piece for orchestra that was performed at her high school graduation.

She continued her cello, voice, and composition studies at Bennington College in Vermont.  Her senior year voice teacher took her and 15 other students to Italy with him for a semester. They lived and studied in a castle in Tuscany. “The experience had a fantastic influence on me both personally and musically,” she said. Lacking a cello teacher, Zucker studied cello performance with the voice teacher, Frank Baker. “I learned about phrasing and the projection of musical ideas -- about how to breathe emotion and life into my playing.  It was both inspiring and perplexing studying with a fabulous musician who knew nothing about cello technique.” 

Age 11-12

A self-described product of the 60s, Zucker traveled to New Mexico with two friends after graduation in 1972, in search of new experiences and adventure.“We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were going to do,” she says.  She ended up staying three years, playing with the Johnny Gilbert Jazz Quartet, the NMSO when it was the Albuquerque Symphony, the Orchestra of Santa Fe as principal cellist, and mounting folk art for Alexander Girard (where she hammered a finger and couldn’t play for six months).

She decided to return to school and earned a master’s degree in cello performance from Ithaca College in 1977.  She then freelanced in New York City including regular performances with the Consort Piano Trio. From there she traveled to Caracas, Venezuela where petro dollars where flowing and five full time orchestras paying excellent salaries had attracted rosters of top quality international musicians.  Zucker played in the Orquesta Filarmonica de Caracas in the first two years of its existence.

She then moved to Merida, Venezuela in the Andes, playing in the Orquesta Filarmonica de Merida, where she was principal cellist and soloist while performing extensively with a string quartet: the Cuarteto International de Cuerdas. Subsequently she taught in the opening year of the celebrated Orquesta Nacional Juvenil.

When the petro dollars stopped flowing, Zucker felt it was time to spend some of that hard earned cash and travel in Asia, sans cello. After four months of trekking in Nepal and Thailand and exploring India and China, she returned to Santa Fe to play principal cello in the Orchestra of Santa Fe, which later became the Santa Fe Symphony. She “paid her musical dues” piecing together a living gigging, teaching privately, teaching at United World College, playing in the Roswell, Santa Fe and NM symphonies as well as the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and working some as NM Artists in Residence.

Zucker enjoys her career. “There can be an incredible sense of communication between the performers and the audience that transcends words and goes directly heart to heart. I particularly love performing chamber music. The rehearsal process is fun: hashing musical ideas out together, trying things you wouldn’t have tried on your own. And then letting the spirit of the piece flow through you during a performance, enjoying spontaneously and wordlessly communicating with your colleagues and your audience so that each performance is unique, and the audience is part of the re-creation of that piece at that moment. It’s a marvelous experience. I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to make a living as a performing musician.”

Zucker tries to lead a well-rounded life, definitely not considering herself a “cello jock.” She likes devoting time and energy to parenting, hiking, gardening, skiing, crafts, and travel in addition to her musical pursuits. She lives in Albuquerque with her teenage son.