The GRAMMY®-nominated American conductor GERARD SCHWARZ — internationally recognized for his moving performances, innovative programming, and extensive catalog of recordings — serves as Music Director of the All-Star Orchestra, Eastern Music Festival, Palm Beach Symphony, and Mozart Orchestra of New York. He is also Conductor Laureate of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Conductor Emeritus of the Mostly Mozart Festival. Schwarz is the Distinguished Professor of Music; Conducting and Orchestral Studies of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, and Music Director of the Frost Symphony Orchestra. He is a renowned interpreter of 19th-century German, Austrian, and Russian repertoire, besides his illustrious work with contemporary American composers.
Guest appearance highlights of Schwarz’s 2023-24 season include performances with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (Canada) with violinist Karen Gomyo, Hartford Symphony Orchestra with pianist Orion Weiss, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Charleston Symphony with his son, the cellist Julian Schwarz, and with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.
Schwarz has led the All-Star Orchestra, an ensemble of top musicians from America’s leading orchestras, in 24 programs that have aired throughout the United States on public television and worldwide via streaming. The All-Star Orchestra is the basis for a Khan Academy education series that has already reached over 7 million students. Schwarz has also collaborated with the United States Marine Band in three programs in partnership with the All-Star Orchestra. All the programs of the All-Star Orchestra have been released by Naxos on DVD, and have received nine Emmy Awards and the Deems Taylor Television Broadcast Award from ASCAP.
Schwarz’s considerable discography of over 350 albums showcases his collaborations with some of the world’s greatest orchestras, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Tokyo Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, and Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The Gerard Schwarz Collection, a 30-CD box set of previously unreleased or limited-release works spanning his entire recording career, was released by Naxos in 2017.
Schwarz began his professional career as co-principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic and has held music director positions with the Mostly Mozart Festival, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and New York Chamber Symphony. He also served as Artistic Advisor to the Tokyo Philharmonic. As a guest conductor, he has worked with many of the world’s finest orchestras. He is also known for his operatic performances and has appeared with the Juilliard Opera, Kirov Opera, Mostly Mozart Festival, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and Washington National Opera, in addition to Frost Opera Theater conducting the world premiere of Michael Dellaira’s The Leopard.
Schwarz is also a prolific composer and arranger, having studied with eminent composers Paul Creston, Roger Sessions, Jacob Druckman, Milton Babbitt, Vincent Persichetti, and Pierre Boulez. His arrangements of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel, and Webern’s Langsamer Satz (titled Adagio for Orchestra and recorded by the All-Star Orchestra) are performed by orchestras worldwide.
Schwarz’s latest composition, Sinfonietta, was commissioned by Don and Mary Thompson to celebrate the Palm Beach Symphony’s 50th anniversary. It received its world premiere in December 2023, under the composer’s baton. “Judging by this three-movement, 16-minute opus, [Schwarz] is a gifted creative artist and should introduce more of his output to local concertgoers,” wrote the South Florida Classical Review, describing Sinfonietta as a “well crafted and vastly appealing” orchestral showpiece.
Five pieces by Schwarz are featured in Naxos recordings: Holiday Classics; Echoes; Rudolf and Jeanette, dedicated to the memory of his maternal grandparents, who died in the Holocaust, and described by Fanfare as “poignant and deeply moving,” and by Gramophone as “an affecting blend of tender and disquieting utterances”; Above and Beyond, premiered in 2012 by the United States Marine Band and recorded for broadcast on PBS (winning an Emmy Award); and In Memoriam, commissioned by the Seattle-based organization Music of Remembrance and named the Best New Work of 2005 by Seattle Weekly. A performance of In Memoriam with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and cellist Jonathan Aasgaard was released by Avie Records in 2005; a performance with the Music of Remembrance ensemble and Julian Schwarz was released by Naxos in 2008.
In The Gerard Schwarz Collection, one CD is dedicated to his compositions, including his Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, commissioned by the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and premiered in 2010, and the new band version of Rudolf and Jeanette. The Trio was called a work of “sophistication and intelligence” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer); MusicWeb International described it as “ingeniously constructed within its thoroughly accessible romantic idiom.” The live album Sounds of the Season, featuring the Palm Beach Symphony under Schwarz, was released in 2022. It includes performances of his arrangements of three choral movements for orchestra from Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Wachet Auf, and Pachelbel’s Canon. Schwarz recently completed Triptych, for violin and cello (2019). Palm Beach Symphony performs his orchestration of Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals this season, in addition to recording it for public television. Schwarz’s large-scale tone poem A Journey was premiered at the Eastern Music Festival in July 2012. Two duos for violin and cello, performed by Maria Larionoff and Julian Schwarz, were premiered in 2009 at an awards ceremony honoring Schwarz as First Citizen of Seattle. Human Spirit, based on words by Aaron Copland and composed for children’s choir and chamber ensemble in 2008, was performed in orchestral version by the Seattle Symphony in 2011. Schwarz also composed a third duo for violin and cello, which was premiered in 2018 at Bargemusic by Mark Peskinov and Julian Schwarz. In 2017, Rhapsody, for cello and orchestra, was premiered by The Sinfonia with Julian Schwarz as soloist. A new version based on In Memoriam, for euphonium and wind ensemble, was premiered in South Korea in 2018.
With more than 300 world premieres to his credit, Schwarz has always commissioned and performed new music. As Music Director of the Eastern Music Festival he initiated the Bonnie McElveen-Hunter Commissioning Project in 2013, celebrating American composers. The project has commissioned works by John Corigliano, Richard Danielpour, André Previn, HyeKyung Lee, and Lowell Liebermann. Working together, Schwarz and McElveen-Hunter — the U.S. Ambassador to Finland from 2001 to 2003 — commissioned 10 composers whose work was premiered at the Eastern Music Festival over 10 seasons. In 2011, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Eastern Music Festival & School, new pieces were commissioned from composers Pierre Jalbert, Peter Boyer, Michael Hersch, Philip Rothman, and Vivian Fung. It was the first time that the Eastern Music Festival presented five world premieres in one season. The same year, to celebrate Schwarz’s farewell season as Music Director of the Seattle Symphony, 18 commissions were unveiled as part of the Gund/Simonyi Farewell Commissions. They included music by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Chen Yi, Richard Danielpour, and Philip Glass.
Schwarz’s final season with the Seattle Symphony in 2011 concluded an acclaimed 26-year tenure — a period of dramatic artistic growth for the ensemble. The season was emblematic of the conductor’s passionate dedication and support for contemporary music, with a total of 22 world premieres. During his leadership, Schwarz was indispensable in the building of Benaroya Hall, spearheading efforts that resulted in the acoustically superb new home for the Seattle Symphony. The City of Seattle recognized his outstanding achievements by naming the street alongside Benaroya Hall “Gerard Schwarz Place,” and the State of Washington gave him the honorary title of “General” for his extraordinary contributions as an artist and citizen.
In more than five decades as a respected classical musician and conductor, Schwarz has received hundreds of honors and accolades, including nine Emmy Awards, 14 GRAMMY® nominations, eight ASCAP Awards, and numerous Stereo Review and Ovation Awards. He holds the Ditson Conductor’s Award from Columbia University and was the first American named Conductor of the Year by Musical America. He has received numerous honorary doctorates, including from The Juilliard School, his alma mater. In 2002, ASCAP honored Schwarz with its Concert Music Award; in 2003, the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (now The Recording Academy) gave Schwarz its first “IMPACT” lifetime achievement award. Active in music advocacy on a national and state level, he served on the National Council of the Arts and is Honorary Chairman of the Board of Young Musicians Excelling, an organization in Washington State that supports music education in the Pacific Northwest.
Gerard Schwarz’s much anticipated memoir, Behind the Baton: An American Icon Talks Music, was published by Hal Leonard in 2017. He has been married to Jody for 40 years, has four children, and lives in Florida.