When his current contract as music director of Seattle Symphony expires at the end of the 2010-2011 season, Gerard Schwarz will move on to the next stage in his wide-ranging career. Rather than seeking to renew his contract with the orchestra he has led for 24 years, Schwarz plans to relinquish the multiple responsibilities involved in the music director’s position being the visionary of the institution, selecting musicians to create a signature sound, programming whole seasons, conducting, recording with, and representing the orchestra. He will instead take on the title of Conductor Emeritus, returning to conduct the Seattle Symphony for several weeks each season.
Schwarz is currently the longest-serving music director of any major orchestra. Seattle will continue to be home for Schwarz, 61, and his wife Jodi and their family. In addition to traveling to guest conducting engagements around the world, Schwarz says he looks forward to spending more time on his work as a composer.
During his distinguished career with Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz has made historic contributions to the civic life of Seattle, and to the worlds of American music and Jewish music. He recently released a new CD, From Jewish Life, featuring his own piece as well as works from other Jewish composers.
With his encouragement, the first building in Seattle designed exclusively for concert performances, Benaroya Hall, took shape and transformed a formerly run-down part of town into the lively center it is today. Schwarz’s September 10 announcement that he would not renew his current contract coincided with celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the opening of Benaroya Hall.
Under his leadership, Seattle Symphony attained an international reputation as a world-class orchestra, with over 125 recordings, 11 Grammy nominations, two Emmy awards, and six awards for adventurous programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. In 1994, Schwarz was named Musical America’s Conductor of the Year.
Schwarz has played a prominent role in Jewish music both locally and on the national stage. He has been an active member of the Artistic Advisory Board of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, a mammoth project spanning two decades of research, 50 CDs, and a national radio series, which Schwarz co-hosted. He conducts on 21 of the Archive’s recordings, including In Celebration of Israel, Kurt Weill: The Eternal Road, and Klezmer Concertos and Encores. (www.milkenarchive.org) Locally, Schwarz serves on the Artistic Advisory Board of Music of Remembrance, often conducting and, recently, composing for MOR.
Schwarz continues his longtime association with Seattle Opera, for which he has conducted 15 productions, with Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers in January 2009. He continues to host “Musical Moments with Gerard Schwarz,” Wednesday nights at 7 on Seattle’s 98.1 classical KING FM.
Launched into international prominence as one of the great trumpet players of his time, Schwarz, born in New Jersey and educated at New York’s Juilliard School, was 25 when the New York Philharmonic named him principal trumpet. His recordings as a trumpeter are still in print, and greatly respected.
He was 30 when he left the philharmonic to devote full time to his conducting career, co-creating the New York Chamber Symphony, based at the 92nd St. Y. He kept that music director position for 25 years, overlapping not only his Seattle Symphony years, but also his tenure as head of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. Also concurrent with Schwarz’s Seattle Symphony tenure was a five-year stint, 2001-2006, as music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
When he arrived in Seattle in 1983, as artistic advisor to the Seattle Symphony, Schwarz was still head of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. As plans for Benaroya Hall were developing here in the mid-1990s, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra brought Schwarz in as Artistic Advisor to Orchard Hall.
Currently, Maestro Schwarz also serves as music director of the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina.
Schwarz has faced challenges during his tenure, with some controversial orchestra personnel issues breaking out into news stories, and a New York critic or two throwing verbal rotten tomatoes his way.
But with three seasons left to go as music director of the Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz will no doubt have a great deal more to say to this city both from the podium and from the microphone. For now, he’s saying this:
“The Seattle Symphony is among the finest orchestras in the world today,” he said in a statement.
“As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our magnificent Benaroya Hall and our extraordinary artistic accomplishments, I believe it is a fitting time to relinquish the music director responsibilities of this orchestra, which has come to mean so much to me over the last 24 years. With my new position, I will be afforded the opportunity to continue a relationship with this fine orchestra and focus on the music-making.”