Gerard Schwarz was born in Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1947. He was educated in New York at the High School of Performing Arts and at the Juilliard School. In 1973 he was selected by Pierre Boulez to be co-principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic, a position he held until 1978. Since leaving the Philharmonic, he has devoted his energies entirely to conducting. He has been music director of the Waterloo Music Festival (where he is now principal conductor) and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. At the present time he is music director of the Seattle Symphony, the Mostly Mozart Festival at New York’s Lincoln Center, and the Y Chamber Symphony of New York. He has appeared as guest conductor with the National Symphony, the Buffalo and Rochester Philharmonic orchestras, the symphonies of Detroit, Houston, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Louisville, St. Louis, Ottawa, and Vancouver, as well as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Abroad, he has conducted orchestras in London, Florence, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Madrid, Monte Carlo, Helsinki, and Paris. He now lives in Seattle and New York.
The position of New York as a cultural leader is a very complex one. In the world of music, New York has been, for many years, the cultural leader in the United States. It is also of course the single most important city in the Western World. But as a true leader, its influence is primarily in the United States.
For me, there seem to be two reasons
