Willy Schwarz
(Bremen/ D-US)
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In General
Willy Schwarz was born in Michigan, USA as the son of italian and german refugees. At a time when the concept of global music was yet unacquainted, Schwarz travelled the world from Brooklyn to Bombay and Katmandu to Kabul, researching, studying and playing music in all the musical languages of the world. In doing so, Willy Schwarz gained inestimable knowledge and also became a highly impressive musical all-rounder. He has played with path - breaking personalities like Tom Waits, Ravi Shankar and Steve Martin. The excellent music he wrote for theater won him the Drama Desk Award in New York. His last two CDs - "Home, Songs of Immigrants, Refugees and Exiles" and "Jewish Music around the World" received great acclaim from the international press and are now available from JARO Medien.
Willy Schwarz’s vision has always been eclectic.
After decades spent absorbing music from all around the globe, Willy has transformed his experiences into songs – songs that reflect his love for the dozens of traditions he has studied, yet maintain the unity of conception and imagination: that is the prerogative of a master storyteller and cosmopolitan respectively.
As a child, Willy got to know italian and german folksongs because his parents always have sung together. At the age of seven, he began making up melodies at the piano – at first just to keep his mother entertained while ironing. By his early teens, he taught himself to play the lute (for months he had been annoying his father to buy one). In total he learned to play at least a dozen different instruments; young Willy was clearly destined to a life full of music. Schwarz began travelling internationally at the age of 13. When he was 14 he went on his first American tour as the leader of a folk trio the ‘Young-uns’. Since then Schwarz has hardly stopped touring.
Though the world is full of musical nomads, few indeed have gone so far and learned so much. Willy went on to sing, play, learn and explore loads places in the world – travelling from Brooklyn to Bombay on an Indian freighter, moving from Kathmandu to Kabul - wherever Willy went, his restless musical mind absorbed songs and sounds he heard transforming them in the crucible of imagination.
In the 1980’s he internationally toured with the critically-acclaimed trio ‘Electricity’: a decade before their music was defined as ‘World Music’ which today has become a recognized musical category.
Though this multi-instrumentalist is probably best known for his work as Tom Waits sideman and keyboarder, Schwarz’ resume commands other accolades such as his internationally-acclaimed musical travelogue ‘Jewish Music Around the World’. He has also created many musical compositions for theater, using his exotic and conventional instruments to score dozens of plays in Chicago, several of which have toured across America, they were even played on the broadway, and Europe. Willy often served as an onstage musician and music director.
Throughout the 1990’s Chicago’s commercial music producers knew him as ‘the weird instrument guy’ – If you needed an Indonesian flute, a Tibetan trumpet or a Ugandan kettledrum, Willy Schwarz would not only bring them, he’d play them brilliantly, idiomatically and with consummate musicianship.
A love for the genuine led Willy to research Chicago’s immigrant musical traditions with the intent of presenting the music to listeners across the USA over National Public Radio. He took this idea further and assembled the 21-piece ‘All American Immigrant Orchestra’, which featured solo and ensemble playing and singing from Brazil, Puerto Rico, China, India, Poland Hungary, Quebec and Armenia; topping the Chicago Tribune’s list of Best Concerts of 1999. After the success of the Chicago project, he followed suit in Europe, organizing an analogous ensemble known as the ‘Bremen Immigranten Orchester’, whose premiere performance was received with equal enthusiasm as it’s Chicago predecessor.
Throughout all his travels, Schwarz kept adding to an ever-growing file of original songs. Well over a decade of creating music for other people’s visions, he decided it was time for his own unique conception of ‘multi-ethnic singer-songwriting’. Travelling to the Indian city of Pune, Willy laid down the basic tracks of his first solo album with the help of over twenty Indian instrumentalists. ‘Live for the Moment’ was finished in Chicago with contributions from artists like Paul Wertico and Howard Levy. It won highest critical praise after its release in 1999. His follow-up CD, a song cycle titled ‘HOME; Songs of Immigrants, Refugees and Exiles’ was released in 2001.
Most recently, Willy Schwarz has composed the music for Mary Zimmerman’s Tony-Award winning Broadway hit, ‘Metamorphoses’, for which he won the 2002 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play. The soundscore for ‘Metamorphoses’ and other theatre music of Willy Schwarz was released by Knitting Factory Records.
Willy has toured and collaborated with such diverse artists as Tom Waits, Theodore Bikel, Ravi Shankar, Alan Ginsberg, David Amram, Shlomo Carlebach and Leon Russell.
Discography
Live For The Moment (1999) JARO 8062-2 / Willy Schwarz
Home (2001) JARO 8061-2 / Willy Schwarz
Jewish Music Around The World (2003) JARO 8060-2 / Willy Schwarz
For more informations go to: www.willyschwarz.com
WILLY SCHWARZ @ Myspace
