These are my thoughts about Mr. Zinger. It was so hard. I didn't do it justice, but I wanted to write them down before I start forgetting. Because Lora asked if I would be wiling to share my thoughts, I am doing so here to honor Mr. Zinger's legacy - it deserves to be recognized and to continue and flourish. I have used much of his pedagogical ideas the last 23 years when teaching my orchestra students. Although it will never be the same as Mr. Zinger's pedagogy, I will continue to try and teach my students how to love music through playing their stringed instruments so that his pedagogy will live on.
“Let it vill be bad - try, TRY!”
My attempted tribute to the world’s greatest violin teacher, Mr. Mark Zinger
Today was a hard day. Today, I said good-bye to Mr. Zinger. I also walked out of his violin studio and apartment one last time, after his burial. I really didn’t want to go.
Mr. Zinger was supposed to live forever. I’ve been having a very hard time finding the words to express my emotions the last few days. So I decided to take Mr. Zinger’s advice when playing the violin and to apply it to my words, somehow: “Let it vill be bad - try, TRY!” So here goes…
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The first time I met Mr. Zinger was at a master class he offered at DePaul. I was in high school. I can’t remember much about it other than I played a movement of a violin concerto and he gave me feedback. I hadn’t had a violin lesson in over a year. My previous teacher was diagnosed with cancer and had passed away. I had started working on this concerto with him, but I had to teach myself the rest of it by listening to it on our record player, over and over again. I didn’t realize at the time that playing for Mr. Zinger was basically like a pre-audition to my audition at DePaul.
Mr. Zinger was tough and honest with his feedback, but reflecting now, knowing what I know now as a teacher, I think he felt sorry for me because my intonation, rhythm, technique, interpretation...everything was terrible, REALLY horrible. But his penetrating eyes - magnified through those super thick glasses - saw into your soul, and he must have seen something in mine and took mercy. Actually, now that I think about it, he probably had superhuman x-ray vision. Maybe that’s why I always thought he was like God to me - omni percipient (yep, had to look that one up.) If the X-men had a violinist in their line-up, it would be Mr. Zinger, wearing his newsboy-style cap and holding his violin and making everyone in the world into professional violinists.
Did I have musical talent? No. Natural musical inclinations? Maybe. Was I made to pursue playing the violin by my mom in college? Yes. I started playing the violin when I was 9. I wanted to play the flute, but it was too big for me. So, my mom went to the local public school office and rented me a violin for $6 a month. She didn’t tell me she was going. Instead, she came home one day, pulled the violin out of the trunk of the car and asked if I wanted to learn how to play it. I said yes; my older brother figured out how to play Twinkle on it (he took organ lessons), he showed me, I learned how to play it, and the rest is Suzuki-like violin lessons history.
When I was in 8th grade, I started playing with the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra. I started gigging with a little string quartet in high school. Then I auditioned for the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and made it, playing with them during my junior and senior year of high school. We performed in Germany, Austria, Carnegie Hall in New York, and we had our usual concerts in Orchestra Hall in Chicago.
These were all amazing experiences, but I was still a naive, shy, introverted teenager, living a very sheltered existence otherwise. My parents immigrated from Lithuania after World War II and were married here in the United States. They had endured much in their lifetime and only wanted the best for their children born here. So pursuing and providing education and opportunities for us was their gift. They always said that education is the only thing you can take with you anywhere you go in the world, and that’s what they wanted us to have.
And that’s what brought me to Mr. Zinger.
I started in 1989 at DePaul, studying violin performance with Mr. Zinger. That was the deal with my mom. No choice. But I wanted to be a math teacher. I LOVED my math teacher in high school. She was amazing. So I decided that while I was getting my undergrad degree at DePaul, I would also take all the classes to become a teacher as well. My plan was to finish my Violin Performance degree, and then go on for a teaching certificate in math education. Problem solved.
I was reminded at his funeral service that Mr. Zinger always said, “If you vant to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.” So, God laughed his belly laugh and miraculously started to help me play better. Minute-by-minute, lesson-by-lesson, the painstaking, knuckle-flexing vibrato exercises and all the tears shed after every violin lesson for 3 long years started to have an effect on my plans to become a math teacher. The tears after each lesson stopped. My bow hand pinky and thumb started relaxing. I could control vibrato. What was happening? I started feeling joy, satisfaction, and pride. I stopped being terrified to go to each lesson, where he would demand I play it this way or that way better. I was smiling more, carrying my violin case everywhere, and practicing. ACTUALLY practicing. I started to not always be embarrassed in the practice rooms anymore. God was really laughing now.
And then it happened: a 30-second conversation in the middle of my senior year, during my weekly lesson with Mr. Zinger. It went something like this:
Me: “Mr. Zinger, I was thinking... I think I should maybe be an orchestra teacher instead of a math teacher.”
Mr. Zinger: [smiles wryly and says with his Russian accent] “Nu, my Riteeeeachka, dees is egzellent idea. I vant you be happy. You vill be happy. You vill make salary. Do it. Now play Prokoviev. Go.”
(I learned yesterday that Mr. Zinger and Prokoviev had the same barber back in the day. God really likes jokes.)
So I registered for my music education classes, without realizing that I had to actually request admittance. I was so oblivious at age 21. So many things I didn’t learn or know about. Luckily, I was accepted. So I finished my undergrad in Violin Performance and then decided that since I was going to be at DePaul anyways, I might as well get my Master’s in Violin Performance at too. Mr. Zinger really liked this idea. He could see I was getting smarter and smarter everyday.
You see, Mr. Zinger actually was a teacher of life. Sure, he taught violin. He demanded that my violin playing be better all the time. After 6 years of lessons with him, I played fairly decently, enough to get paid to perform in symphonies. He was proud of my playing: “Nu, Riteeeachka, now you begin to play like professional.” I’ll never forget that day. But that’s not really what he was teaching all those years. He was using the violin to reach my soul, not just reach my heart. It’s easy to reach one’s heart, but to reach the soul, not just anyone can do that - only someone who has a direct-line to God. And Mr. Zinger apparently had him on speed dial.
Mr. Zinger molded my soul from our first interaction to our last. I have considered the start of my college experience as my second birth. And this “second” birth was filled with many emotions. I have begun to forget details of things that happened 30 years ago with Mr. Zinger, and that’s why I found it so important for me to take today - while our kids were out of the house and only our dog is laying at my feet - to write this. But what I do remember are all the feelings and advice that he gave me that shaped me into my core person, who I am today. I use these words carefully, because I am still navigating through life - mistakes, defects, blunders, and all. But even with all the mistakes I make daily, I always hear Mr. Zinger’s wisdom of life telling me to do it better. Very often, his voice nags at me in the back of my neck, saying it the only way he knew to best say it: “Nu, Riteeeeeachka. Do it. Now play. Go.”
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Since 1995, I have sent him a Christmas card every year. I have also visited him several times. One year, I brought one of my middle school orchestras to perform for him during a special master class he arranged for me at DePaul. Throughout the years he would periodically call me to check on me. In fact, I have saved his voice message on my answering machine from many years ago. That one is so special because I can hear his voice reprimanding me for: not calling him, for not visiting him, he is wanting to see our children, I can come visit him and his wife anytime, but the best time to call is the evening (because he is still teaching during the day in his upper 80’s!)
Mr. Zinger was the best at telling stories. But they weren’t your average stories. They were philosophically Gestalt stories - stories that intertwined love, life, politics, friendships, problems, joy, religion, sorrow, history - all woven into one gigantic ball of wisdom. You couldn’t sit there and listen to him without feeling awe (of your own stupid stupidity.) I have never met another human being who could suck the marrow out of life and continually be able to share it again every time we had an interaction, even it was but brief.
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Thinking back, I remember the day during college that he told me I had an old soul. At first, I was offended. I was NOT old - I was a youthful 20 year-old, full of energy, zest, and fun. But now, I understand what he was saying. I think he saw that my soul was a listening soul, learning with every interaction and experience I had in life. But I think all of his students were like this - I think he sought out these types of students. Even when I would cry after my lessons, I took his demanding words of advice and I worked on implementing them to my being, one word at a time. I didn’t purposely say to myself, “Okay, implement 'this concept' now.” Instead, it kind of melted into me, gradually, without me knowing that it was happening. I tried to learn what Mr. Zinger was teaching in-between all the practicing that I should have been doing. The more time I spent with Mr. Zinger psychoanalyzing me and sharing his analysis through his hilarious analogies, the more I started to see him and the amazing human being he was.
I am starting to believe more and more that we are interconnected on this planet, more than we each realize. I think cosmic fate really exists, and it has graced my life. After his passing, I learned that Mr. Zinger entered the Russian army in World War II. He would entertain the troops as an army musician, to help their morale. I don’t know if he didn’t tell me purposely, or if it just never had a reason to enter our conversations over the years. But here’s the irony of the divine intervention that brought us together...my father fled Lithuania because he could hear the Russian army advancing towards their home. When I realized this last night, I suddenly felt a sense of peace with the world, knowing that we are all connected. And both my father and Mr. Zinger came to America to live a life of freedom and prosperity, my father in 1949 and Mr. Zinger in 1979. They both worship America for all it gave them. On the other side of the world, two complete strangers on separate “sides” - one fearing the other, one entertaining the ones feared - were meant to connect in a different way: not by my father being captured and put into the Red Army, but instead to nurture a not-yet-born human being...me. Mr. Zinger became my second father.
There is nothing about the present me that wasn’t shaped and molded by Mr. Zinger - my philosophy of life and education, politics, spirituality, approach towards teaching, my love of psychology, strive for trying to make things better, relationships, parenting, love, adventure, fear, and even my created “Frozen Chicken from Dominick’s” student award that I created in his honor (and analogous humor) and awarded to my most improved students each year over 20 years of my teaching middle school - all of this started with him. He also impacted who I chose to marry, wanting me to have a happy life. My husband is very philosophical and wise, and loves children, which was important to me; to spend my life with a person with whom I could discuss the world with and raise children with. And for that I am eternally grateful.
My story with Mr. Zinger is not unique. He loved every student as if s/he was his own child. He was a father to all of us. EVERY student of his learned how to LIVE, not just play the violin. He would say that vibrato comes from the heart. What he was really saying is that the product of our fruits and labors should come from our inner core, no matter what we are doing in life. When he told me that last time together that I should do everything with love, and also that we should all teach our students how to LOVE music, he wasn’t joking - he really meant it. As I sit here today, only three days after his passing, I am so overwhelmed by missing him already. He truly was like a father to me. And I was just one of his many students, family members, audience members, and people that he interacted with throughout his 93 years. I know that the ripple effect of his legacy is only beginning. It is no exaggeration that the world has lost not only the best violin teacher, but also God’s speed-dial button presser. (I can hear him belly-laughing, snickering at my terrible analogy of him. I tried, Mr. Zinger, let it will be bad.)
Spasibo, Mr. Zinger.
With Love, Rita Kazlauskas Feuerborn
(Included is a photograph of Mr. Zinger’s chair.)
Violin Professor Emeritus, Mark Zinger:
b. June 13, 1924 - d. February 5, 2018
93 years old
Please consider donating to the continuation of Mark Zinger’s legacy:
The Mark Zinger Foundation - www.markzinger.org
