About
Biography
“What I require for music to really captivate me,” Anton says, “is groove and intellect working in tandem. Music that gets into your bones, into your head and into your heart.”
In 1995, Anton Schwartz walked away from a high-powered academic career in Artificial Intelligence to play music full-time. Anton quickly gained an enthusiastic following as fans responded to what the San Francisco Chronicle called his “warm, generous tone, impeccably developed solos and infectious performance energy.” In the years since, Anton has won over listeners and critics at high-profile jazz venues across the country, including the Blue Note in New York, Washington D.C.’s Blues Alley and the Monterey Jazz Festival. His appearances at Yoshi’s in San Francisco and Oakland draw sellout crowds. His four CDs have earned sterling reviews and strong airplay, with his most recent Radiant Blue landing Top Five on the American jazz radio charts.
Billboard Magazine wrote of his 2000 release, The Slow Lane, “Schwartz savors the implications of each note, allowing the listener to delight in the endless melodies created by his stirring improvisations.” Anton’s first CD, When Music Calls (1998), inspired the San Francisco Bay Guardian to report, “Anton Schwartz has everything you want to hear in a modern jazz saxophonist–an appealing, consistent tone, an abundance of ideas fueling both his compositions and his improvisations, and superb taste in musical collaborators.”
Perhaps famed saxophonist Illinois Jacquet put things most succinctly when he told Anton, “You play the tenor sax like it’s meant to be played.”
Anton is also in great demand as a teacher. He is a faculty member of Stanford Jazz Workshop and The Jazzschool, a clinician at the Brubeck Institute, and has been Artist in Residence at Harvard University and the Brubeck Institute Summer Jazz Colony.
“It’s especially gratifying to me to see so many people reacting so wholeheartedly to my music.” Indeed, longtime aficionados and jazz newcomers alike rave about his performances. That ability to capture hearts and minds at all ends of the jazz spectrum has made Anton an important figure in the jazz scene, today and for years to come.