Musicdance critic sported ‘brilliant’ style
Marilyn Tucker, an arts critic whose lively, informed writing about classical music and dance filled the pages of The Chronicle for three decades, died on Aug. 11, at the Carnelian Assisted Living Care Home in Walnut Creek. She was 89.
The cause of death was complications from a stroke suffered in 2011, according to her daughter, Rebecca.
Tucker’s primary love was music, a devotion that she first cultivated in the Lutheran church of her childhood. But over the course of her years at The Chronicle, which began in 1964, she developed a wideranging versatility that allowed her to write about theater, literature and especially dance.
Her reviews could be tartly phrased — she once described an unfortunate soprano’s performance in Verdi’s “La Traviata” as sounding like a dog yelping in pain — but more often she was known as a generous and supportive champion of local artists and organizations.
Conductor Kent Nagano, whose international career began as music director of the Berkeley Symphony, paid tribute in a statement.
“Generations of artists and their colorful San Francisco Bay Area public join together in mourning the passing of Marilyn Tucker,” he wrote. “Her insights and thoughtful, often brilliant perspectives as a journalist helped nourish and provoke the great arts tradition in Northern California.”
In addition to criticism, Tucker wrote frequent news articles, feature stories and especially artist profiles, which often demonstrated her ability to bring out the personal side of dancers, opera stars, conductors and choreographers.
In a 1986 interview with Bulgarian soprano Ghena Dimitrova, for example, on the eve of her San Francisco Opera debut (which turned out to be her only appearance with the company), Tucker elicited a freewheeling and candid conversation about the operatic world — even while speaking through an interpreter.
She was born Marilyn Kamprath on Oct. 25, 1929, in Seward, Neb., the sixth of eight children in a family of German immigrants. Music was a constant presence in the family home — her mother enforced silence every Saturday afternoon during the Metropolitan Opera’s weekly radio broadcast — and she had hopes of pursuing a career as a mezzosoprano.
Instead, Tucker earned a teaching credential from Concordia College (now Concordia University) in Seward, and then a degree in English from San Diego State University.
After moving to the Bay Area in the late 1950s, Tucker sang regularly with a number of local choruses, both amateur and professional, and contributed to local newspapers, including the Oakland Tribune. One of the choruses she sang in, the Oakland Symphony Chorus, was directed by Robert Commanday, and soon after he joined the staff of The Chronicle in 1964, he brought Tucker on board.
Tucker’s husband of 42 years, Floyd Tucker — a longtime reporter and editor who also served as international vice president of the Newspaper Guild, the union representing Chronicle journalists — died in 2002. In addition to her daughter, from Richmond, Tucker is survived by her sons Christopher, of Spokane, Wash., and Timothy, of Walnut Creek; a brother, Frederic Kamprath, of Boca Raton, Fla.; and six grandchildren.
In the years after her retirement, Tucker traveled widely, crisscrossing the globe to attend performances of Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle and to sightsee in such locations as Myanmar, Peru, Turkey and Cuba. She was a dedicated runner and weight lifter, and contributed music reviews to the American Record Guide.
A memorial service is planned for 11 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 25 — her 90th birthday — at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicle’s music critic. Email: jkosman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoshuaKosman