Clarinetist Who’s ‘Had a Lot to Prove’

“Things have changed a lot since I came into the orchestra (in 1961),” Michele Zukovsky says with what seems to be her characteristic bemusement. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist--who solos with the orchestra Thursday night at Hollywood Bowl--then illustrates her point with a story.

“It was about three years after I joined the Philharmonic. (Rafael) Kubelik came one week as guest conductor, and on the program was the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony. I had been assigned the (clarinet) solos.

“Kubelik got to rehearsal, climbed onto the podium, took one look at me and said, ‘Oh, no. Don’t do this to me.’

“After some consultation, it was decided I would not play the solos that week.”

Two decades and three years later, Zukovsky acknowledges, conductorial rejection of a female player would not be tolerated.

“In those days, we didn’t make waves,” she remembers, noting also that not only was she merely 22 years old, she was still an assistant principal, and her immediate supervisor was her father, longtime Philharmonic principal Kalman Bloch.

Zukovsky doesn’t tell a lot of conductor stories. In an interview on the executive floor of the Pavilion at the Music Center last week, she said she prefers not to say a lot about the most controversial aspect of symphonic life.

She admitted to having “a vast record collection,” and to “having learned enough about conductors so that I can often identify them from their recordings--or sometimes from live radio broadcasts.”

“I wasn’t very ambitious at that time,” Zukovsky recalled. “And I had other interests outside music, things I might have pursued. But I liked to play the clarinet and saw an interesting opportunity, so I went for it.

“It wasn’t till years later that I realized how tremendously lucky I had been to get the chance I got.”

Contrary to what outsiders may think, Zukovsky said, it is not the isolated solo appearance that tests the mettle of the individual orchestra member. It is the weekly rigors of the symphonic grind.

“Playing in an orchestra keeps the soloist honest,” she claimed, “since what orchestra playing demands is a fuller tone plus the most careful intonation. When you’re surrounded by colleagues, you have to play in tune. These are things the soloist, left to his own devices, can forget, out in the world.”

Constant new challenges keep Zukovsky fresh in her job, she said.

“I circumvent the danger of burning out by playing festivals--mostly chamber music, but solos, too.”

This summer, she appeared at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and at the Kapalua Festival on Maui, where she played works by Beethoven, Weber and Bartok.

About the Copland Concerto--for which her father gave the West Coast premiere in 1951--Zukovsky said, “It’s part of my background. I’ve known it so long, and it seems so natural. What could be more natural for an American musician than to play American music?”

But, she said, it’s never really easy to be a musician.

“Sometimes, in an orchestra, we will have times--a couple of weeks, perhaps--when things just go along,” she said. “But mostly we live in the real world. And things are tough out there. It’s never easy.”