It’s a rare day when a father and son perform in a concert together. But Vancouver Symphony Orchestra goers will enjoy that treat when Gerard Schwarz, former longtime music director of the Seattle Symphony, and his son, cellist Julian Schwarz, play at Skyview Concert Hall this weekend.
The duo will team up for a cello concerto by Sam Jones and a short piece for cello and orchestra by Gerard Schwarz. Those selections put a Northwest vibe into an all-American program that also features works by George Gershwin, Valerie Coleman and Howard Hanson.
The concerts mark a return engagement for the father-son duo, who made a big splash when they debuted with the hometown band in January 2020.
Gerard Schwarz helmed the Seattle Symphony for 26 years, making numerous recordings that garnered 14 Grammy nominations and two Emmy awards. He’s the music director of the All-Star Orchestra, the Eastern Music Festival, the Palm Beach Symphony and the Mozart Orchestra of New York. He also teaches conducting at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.
If you go
What: Gerard and Julian Schwarz return for an all-American concert.
When: 7 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Online or in-person at Skyview High School Concert Hall, 1300 N.W. 139th St., Vancouver.
Cost: $36 general admission, $10 for students, $15 to livestream online
Contact: 360-735-7278 or vancouversymphony.org
Julian Schwarz is an award-winning cellist who played with the Seattle Symphony when he was 11 years old. He is on the faculty of the conservatory at Shenandoah University, teaches at New York University, and maintains a busy schedule with orchestras and chamber ensembles.
The concert will offer two pieces that are interconnected personally for the Schwarzes. The first is “In Memoriam,” which Gerard Schwarz wrote for Music of Remembrance, a Seattle-based program that is centered on preserving the memory of the Holocaust. The piece honors the life of David Tonkonogui, a member of the Seattle Symphony who was Julian’s first cello teacher.
“I started taking lessons from David Tonkonogui when I was 6 years old,” Julian Schwarz said. “He instilled in me the love of music and the love of the instrument. He is always with me. He passed away when I was 11 or 12 and I was devastated.”
“My father wrote ‘In Memoriam,’ for extended use of the lowest register of the cello,” Julian Schwarz added. “It’s a very hauntingly beautiful work, and I love it.”
The music also resonated with Samuel Jones, who was the composer-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony for 14 years.
“Sam (Jones) loved ‘In Memoriam’ so much that he asked if he could quote it in a piece that he wanted to write,” Gerard Schwarz said. “So Sam took the first theme of my piece and put it in his piece. … He made it his, but the melody is mine.”
That piece became the “Cello Concerto,” which Jones wrote for Julian and dedicated to Gerard for his final year with the Seattle Symphony.
“The concerto has three movements,” Julian Schwarz said. “But through the composer’s ingenious use of motivic development, he weaves in the same thematic material throughout all three movements.”
Julian started learning the piece in July 2010 when he was 19 years old in preparation for the world premiere, which was scheduled for early September.
“During August, I committed the piece to memory, which is not common for the first performance. Since the music is not familiar to your ear, you usually play from a score,” Julian Schwarz said. “But my father was worried, because I had a lot of things going on that summer, including a string competition and a music festival in Switzerland. … A few weeks before the premiere, he arranged for a pianist and me to play it for the composer. He thought that I would not be prepared, and that this would give me a kick in the pants. So I played the entire piece from memory, and that convinced him that I was ready. As I look back on that experience, I am very proud because it made my father believe that I had a work ethic.”
Also on the program is “Seven O’Clock Shout” by composer Valerie Coleman, the original flutist of Imani Winds, the Grammy nominated quintet.
“During the pandemic at 7 p.m., people would bang their pots and pans as a thank you to health care workers who heroically got the entire country through the pandemic,” Gerard Schwarz explained. “So, in the middle of the piece there’s a place for the orchestra to scream and shout.”
The concert includes Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2, which he gave the subtitle “Romantic.”
“Hanson is remembered as the head of the Eastman School of Music,” Gerard Schwarz said. “He received that position when he was in his 20s. The Second Symphony is the most popular of the seven symphonies that he wrote. It has some of the greatest melodies written by an American composer.”
Kicking off the concert is George Gershwin’s “American in Paris,” a perennial favorite with a jazzy style that uses four taxi-horns to evoke the bustling street scene in The City of Light. It nicely rounds out Schwarz’s program with its accent on home-grown composers.
