By TONI MARIE MARCHIONI

Gerard Schwarz is an incredibly busy man. Currently celebrating his 21st season as music director of the Seattle Symphony, this Juilliard alum is also in his fifth year as music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. He is principal conductor for the Eastern Music Festival and serves on the National Council on the Arts. He travels and tours regularly, having conducted nearly every major orchestra, worked with the world's finest soloists, and recorded an extensive discography. Fortunately for Juilliard students, Maestro Schwarz is also able to squeeze in a trip to Juilliard to help celebrate the School's centennial with a concert this month.

Gerard Schwarz (Photo by Wah Lui)

While he is primarily heralded today for his conducting, Schwarz's career began with the trumpet. Growing up in New Jersey with the New York Philharmonic as his home orchestra, he says he always had "tremendous teaching." He progressed very quickly throughout high school, so it seemed obvious that he should attend Juilliard. Continuing with his teacher, William Vacchiano (then principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic), Schwarz spent his years at Juilliard playing professionally with the American Brass Quintet and the American Symphony Orchestra under Stokowski. He reminisces, "Even though I had already made a lot of records, including my first solo recording when I was 19, my dream was always to be first trumpet in a major orchestra." He fulfilled that dream in 1972, when he took over Vacchiano's vacated seat in the Philharmonic.

Despite this major accomplishment, after a few years, Schwarz says he felt less connected to music in which the trumpet was merely a "fringe instrument," and he wanted to make more of a contribution to the orchestra. This desire "to be more intimately involved with great music and its performance" was the catalyst for many conducting posts, including those with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Waterloo Music Festival, New York Chamber Symphony, and White Mountains Festival. By 1982, he had already garnered national acclaim and was appointed music director for New York's own Mostly Mozart Festival.

In a recent telephone interview, Schwarz spoke fondly of his highly successful tenure at Mostly Mozart. Thanks to the millions of summer residents in New York who could escape from their stifling apartments to the air-conditioning in Philharmonic Hall, Mostly Mozart was already popular when Schwarz arrived. However, the board felt the festival needed, in Schwarz's words, "a new direction, a new niche." Though Mozart was the right composer, with his prolific and diverse repertoire, the orchestra hadn't even played many of the symphonies upon Schwarz's arrival, and "musically, the festival wasn't so successful." Schwarz also felt the ensemble "had no personality. For an orchestra to have a voice of its own," he explains, "it really needs to have a music director who sticks around for awhile to reinforce that vision of what the orchestra should sound like." Therefore, his charge was "to broaden the repertoire, improve the quality of the orchestra, and improve its exposure in terms of national and international concerts."

Faculty member Behzad Ranjbaran, whose Violin Concerto will receive its New York premiere in a Juilliard Orchestra concert on April 10, conducted by Gerard Schwarz. (Photo by Peter Schaaf)

Under Schwarz, the festival's repertoire expanded significantly to include not only Mozart, but also composers who influenced him and who were influenced by him. To maintain the orchestra's consistency throughout the year, the festival added winter tours of New York State and started a two-week residency in Tokyo, Japan, in addition to their weeks in New York and Washington, D.C. They also debuted at the Tanglewood and Ravinia Festivals and were featured regularly on Live From Lincoln Center. "It was a very exciting time," says Schwarz, but after 20 years at the festival's helm, with a list of accomplishments (including a prime-time Emmy nomination for a Mozart Requiem performance), "I really felt like I had done what I was going to do and had nothing new to offer, and I thought it would be better for someone else to try." He left the position in 2001 and currently serves as conductor emeritus.

Juilliard students will be among the beneficiaries of Maestro Schwarz's return to New York this month. The Juilliard Orchestra concert in Alice Tully Hall will feature music of David Diamond (as reworked by Schwarz), faculty member Behzad Ranjbaran, and Gustav Mahler—a combination that Schwarz confesses "isn't ideal in terms of what goes together sonically, but makes a lot of sense for the students and for the School."

The program will open with the premiere of Fanfare, a piece written by Schwarz as a gift for Diamond. Originally performed in abridged form at a concert honoring the reopening of the renovated Eastman Theater in Rochester, N.Y. (coinciding with the 150th birthday of George Eastman), the work comprises excerpts from Diamond's early ballet Tom (1936-37) and part of his Concerto for Small Orchestra (1940). Schwarz put it together as a fanfare for brass and percussion, which he describes as "short but tricky and difficult."

Juilliard Orchestra Gerard Schwarz, conductor William Harvey, violin Alice Tully Hall Monday, April 10, 8 p.m. Free tickets available March 27 in the Juilliard Box Office.

When asked to do a program for the 100th anniversary of Juilliard, Schwarz said the Ranjbaran Violin Concerto was "a given." Master's student and concerto competition winner William Harvey will perform the piece, which was premiered in 2003 by violinist Joshua Bell with Maestro Schwarz conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. The concerto only received its American premiere in 2004. Schwarz says that he has always been a fan of Iranian composer Ranjbaran's music because "it comes from his roots and from who he is. I love that it has personality and a unique voice." Bell says, "this concerto is a grand work—both lyrical and powerful, melodic and well-structured. … From the moment I read through the first draft of the piece, I knew that it had a chance of becoming one of the modern staples of the violin repertoire. I was not surprised to hear that the concerto was chosen by Julliard for this year's student violin competition. This fact makes me ever more confident that this piece will have a splendid future."

The concert will close with the complex and sonorous world of Mahler's Symphony No. 5, a mammoth work with which Schwarz is intimately familiar (he's recorded it twice). He believes it's always important to perform "a standard work that the students will encounter during their days as orchestral musicians."

Read an interview with Behzad Ranjbaran.

As a young musician, it's easy to wonder how an artist like Maestro Schwarz has remained so dedicated and enthusiastic throughout his very long-lasting and successful career. When asked how to stay committed, he says, "We've entered this world because we love music. Yes, some people enter it because they love the sound of a certain instrument, or because they were inspired by someone's playing. But basically, it is about the love of music. As time goes on in our professional lives, we all will encounter many challenges and issues. You hear about people having tremendous anxiety, depression, or nervousness. The key really is to focus always on the music—on its expressive qualities, on its power, on its passion, on the ability it has to inspire others and to make a better world. And then you live a great life, whether it's a life specifically in music, or one where music is just a part of your life. But it's a great thing to always remember—to always focus on why we do what we do."

Toni Marie Marchioni is a master's student in oboe.