Cellist Julian Schwarz made his performance debut at the age of nine, playing composer Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei at the synagogue his family attended in Seattle, Washington.
For the next 11 years, he played the Kol Nidrei on Yom Kippur at Temple De Hirsh Sinai.
“The cantor at my childhood synagogue believed in me as a young cellist,” says Schwarz, who is the son of conductor and trumpet player Gerard Schwarz and flutist Jody Schwarz. “I remember the feeling of sitting in the first row waiting for this big moment.”
One year, a famous cellist came to Seattle and asked, through Schwarz’s father, if he could play the Kol Nidrei that year.
“And I said, ‘Absolutely not, this is my gig,’” recalls Schwarz, who would later record Bruch’s Kol Nidrei for the Milken Archive of Jewish Music.
Nowadays, he plays the Kol Nidrei at Yom Kippur services at New York’s Central Synagogue, “the most visible playing I’ve done in my life, because Central Synagogue was one of the first organizations to live stream services well before the pandemic, and they have such a large following,” he says, reaching well over a million viewers each year.
Schwarz will play this beloved, evocative composition with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra at Catalina Foothills High School on Nov. 8 and 9 as part of TSO’s Masterworks series.
“Julian is an incredibly expressive, dynamic artist,” says Ben Nisbet, TSO artistic administrator, who notes that Schwarz has played with the TSO before.
Schwarz has performed as a soloist with symphonies across the U.S. and around the globe. As a chamber musician, he has performed extensively with his wife, pianist Marika Bournaki, and with other ensembles. He has appeared at numerous music festivals. He teaches at Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, and NYU’s Steinhardt School of Music.
In Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, the cello sounds like a cantor, says Nisbet. “It’s a beautiful piece that we’ve wanted Julian to perform for years.”
Schwarz says instrumentalists don’t usually think about timbre as much as vocalists do, but he likes to explore different timbres “through my use of the bow and the vibrato and the approach. I’m much informed by vocal music. And so that’s why Kol Nidrei is such a perfect piece for me.”
Schwarz will also play Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme at the TSO concerts.
“Since the Rococo variations are very classical in scope, the Kol Nidrei being a more, I would say, a more emotionally forward piece, I thought that was a nice balance,” Schwarz says.
Schwarz began playing piano at age five and tried out various instruments before choosing the cello.
“It was a difficult decision because there are too many options. So I went to a music camp called Interlochen in Michigan, and every summer, I tried a different instrument,” he says, including the French horn, clarinet, percussion instruments, and oboe. “But cello was, for me, what fit most naturally in my hands, and it has a vocal quality, and that’s what I love about music. I love singing through the cello.”
TSO’s Masterworks performances include pre-concert talks, and Schwarz is looking forward to participating.
“I always like to talk about the music I’m playing, and I always love connecting with audiences in that way,” he says, noting that he’ll also teach a master class for students of Theodore Buchholz at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music.
He’s also looking forward to listening to the second half of the TSO concerts, which will include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral,” which happens to be the piece of music that inspired him to become a musician.
At around age 10, he remembers, his father conducted a Mostly Mozart Festival concert in New York’s Central Park. After listening for a while, he went backstage to run around with some of his cousins.
“We were having a great time,” he says. “And I was hearing this music. It was the Beethoven Sixth, and I was captivated by it. And I said, ‘Cousins, I gotta go. Gotta listen.’ So I left the fun in the backstage and went out and sat under the stars in the first row, and just was captivated by the Beethoven Sixth Symphony. Every time I hear it, I just am so thankful to be a musician, and so I’m looking forward to hearing it at this concert.”
