Det Danske Sangselskab

The American-born Paul Schwartz was raised in London and received his musical education at the Royal College of Music there, where his principal studies were conducting with Norman Del Mar, and composition with John Lambert. Upon completing his degree, he graduated first in a class of 140 students. Subsequent studies include work with composers Gyorg Ligeti, Franco Donatoni, Peter Maxwell Davies, and conductor Franco Ferrara.
In 1988 Mr. Schwartz was invited by Peter Martins to supervise New York City Ballet’s American Music Festival. Additionally, he composed two commissioned scores for the company. Other ballet commissions include scores for Milwaukee Ballet, Ohio Ballet, Nederlands Dance Theater, and the Lucinda Childs Dance Company. Mr. Schwartz’s theatre piece Summer won a major award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has been presented twice in New York and once in the UK. He has written music for several plays, most recently the critically acclaimed Southern Comforts which opened in New York in 2007. He has also very selectively composed film scores, including the documentary Les enfants Jouent a la Russie for director Jean Luc Godard.

Mr.Schwartz has been commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony, the Arden Trio, the Brass Trio of New York, as well as other ensembles in the United States. Additional prizes and awards include the Adrian Boult Conducting Scholarship, composition awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts (twice), and composition prizes at the Academmia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and Hans Werner Henze’s Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano.

As a conductor Mr. Schwartz has served as first assistant conductor and assistant chorus master with the Washington Opera. He was the William Steinberg Fellow of the Pittsburgh Symphony, where he served as Andre Previn’s assistant, and as conductor and coordinator of their contemporary music programme. He has conducted for New York City Ballet, Ballet Rambert in the UK and various opera and music festivals in his home state New York as well as elsewhere in the US. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1991 leading the gala event for the Museum of the City of New York.

Recent compositions include two sets of songs: Cummings Love Songs, and Glimpses of Sappho. This latter piece was recorded and released in 2007, and will have its concert premiere in Copenhagen in 2009. Other new pieces completed in 2008 include both a string quartet and a string trio.

His future activities include the composition of a new chamber opera commissioned by Musikdramatisk Teater in Holstebro, Denmark. The new piece will be a deconstruction of the Orpheus myth and is set to premiere in the Autumn of 2011. In addition he has been asked to write a new piece for the ensemble miXte. Other plans include the composition of a double-cello quintet for the 2009 Langvad Chamber Music Jamboree, a set of songs for soprano and small orchestra based on Inger Christensen’s five-part poem LYS, and the development of a new theatre piece based on the life of the painter Egon Schiele.