Bio:
Cantor Azi Schwartz is the Senior Cantor of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, and is a world-renowned vocal performer and recording artist whose music reaches both Jewish and interfaith audiences internationally. His craft of Jewish liturgical music has been described as emotionally moving, spiritually uplifting, and artistically dynamic.
Azi grew up in a traditional community in Israel. His grandfather, also a cantor, inspired Azi to pursue his passion and inclination for singing and music. After graduating from Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute and studying under the top cantors in the world, Azi continued studying music with a Masters in Classical Singing and Conducting from Mannes School of Music.
This journey brought Azi to New York, where he leads Park Avenue Synagogue (PAS), the largest Conservative community in NYC and the flagship of Jewish liturgical music in North America. As PAS Music Center’s Director, Cantor Schwartz creates, records, and publishes new liturgical music, as well as hosts world-class guest artists for concerts and worship.
Passionate to bring Jewish liturgy to the broader world, Azi has performed at Carnegie Hall, the United Nations, Madison Square Garden, the US Capitol Rotunda, and the Israeli Knesset. In 2018, Azi was featured in a PBS special titled, “The New York Cantors,” which brought cantorial music to millions of viewers across the US and in Europe. During Pope Francis’ visit to New York in October 2015, Cantor Schwartz represented the Jewish people at the multi-religious service at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. He plays the cantor’s role in Richard Gere’s movie ‘Norman’, and performs in concerts and interfaith missions around the world. Azi has an astounding online following. He has released nine studio albums containing traditional and newly commissioned jewish liturgical music.
Dedicated to cultivating the next generation of cantors, Azi serves on faculty of all major cantorial schools, and serves as Treasurer for the Cantors’ Assembly, the largest professional organization for cantors. Azi is married to Dr. Noa Schwartz, and they have four children.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).