CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Willy Schwarz
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City/Place:
Bremen
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Country:
Germany
Life & Work
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Bio:
Willy Schwarz’s vision has always been eclectic.
After decades spent absorbing music from around the globe, Willy has alchemically transformed his experience into songs – songs that reflect his love for the dozens of traditions he’s studied, yet maintain the unity of conception and imagination that is the prerogative of a master storyteller and a master.
As a child, Willy had learned the Italian and German folksongs his parents sung together. At seven, he began making up melodies at the piano – at first just to keep his mother happy while she did the ironing. By his early teens, he’d taught himself to play the lute (after pestering his dad for months to buy one), then learned to play at least a dozen different instruments; Young Willy was clearly destined for a life in music
Schwarz began traveling internationally at 13. As the leader of a folk trio the ‘Young-uns’ he went on his first American tour at 14. Schwarz has hardly stopped in the four decades since then.
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 all over the world – traveling from Brooklyn to Bombay on an Indian freighter, moving from Kathmandu to Kabul – wherever Willy went, his restless musical mind absorbed the songs and sounds he heard, transforming them in the crucible of imagination.
In the 1980’s he toured internationally with the critically-acclaimed trio ‘Eclectricity’, whose enormous spectrum of music defined ‘World Music’ a decade before it became a recorgnized musical category.
Though this multi-instrumentalist is probably best known for his stint as keyboardist and sideman to Tom Waits, 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, Europe and Broadway. Willy often served as 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.
Willy was awarded the Villa Ichon Peace and Culture Prize 2011 for his work in bringing together music and musicians from many cultures. This prestigious award has in previous years been received by such illustrious personalities as philosopher Ivan Illich and rock giant Udo Lindenberg.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Scattered among the world’s cultures for 2000 years, the Jewish People developed as many musical milieus as the lands they inhabited, yet clung tenaciously to their ancient, unique traditions, based in Biblical texts and the yearly festival cycle. As a result, ‘Jewish Music’ can be regarded as the original ‘World Music’, exemplifying innumerable instrumental and vocal styles. These reflect the historical heritage of the diaspora, and the adaptive cultural strategies which enabled Jews to survive while living within alien societies.
In his concert presentation, Willy Schwarz takes the audience on a musical world tour, offering glimpses into the heart of Jewish life as experienced in many lands and in many different ages. Singing in 9 different languages, playing 12 exotic musical instruments, Willy is an unparalleled tour guide, leading listeners from Morocco to China, from the Ukraine to the Lower East Side, from Ethiopia to Bosnia with wit, experience and deep feeling. Many of these musical idioms have all but disappeared, making Jewish Music Around the World equally fascinating for both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences.
Willy Schwarz has presented this program for synagogues, churches, festivals, universities, clubs and concert series throughout the USA and Canada, as well as across Europe.
Clips (more may be added)
Few people know that the Bay of All Saints was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. And few people know the transcendence these people, and their descendents, wrought. That's where this Matrix begins...
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers all over the planet.
This Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from Brazil's sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix... expanding like the canopy of a rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, branches spreading to embrace the entire world...
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
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 founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
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