In Memory - Will Schwartz

Maestro Will Schwartz died on Friday, August 27, 2010
Uncle Will Remembered by Thomas A. Blomster

When Will Schwarz stepped down as Music Director of the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra in 1999 he quipped: “I think 50 years is long enough”. Maestro Schwarz always had a quick wit and sharp intellect, and this tongue-in-cheek comment was typical of him. I did not meet Will until some years later when my wife Noriko Nikki Tsuchiya and I first started dating after meeting in the pit for the Fort Collins Nutcracker. Nikki attended CSU as a young woman, and along with her piano teacher Wendel Diebel, Maestro Schwartz was a formative figure in her life. She frequently accompanied Uncle Will for late night chamber music reading sessions. In addition to his work as a conductor, Maestro Schwartz was a stunning violinist. Maestro Schwartz joined the music faculty at CSU in 1949 after serving in the military and touring as a solo violinist. He felt that Fort Collins would be a good place to raise a family and immediately took over the reins of the Fort Collins Symphony. I was fortunate to spend time with Uncle Will over the last years of his life. Talking with Will was a rare treat. Between his humor, curiosity, and tremendous knowledge, conversations were wide ranging in topic and always funny. In 2007, Nikki and I decided we should honor Maestro Schwartz with a concert. We called the program “A Concert of Good Will” and ask Uncle Will if he would conduct the orchestra we would assemble for him. The Maestro side- stepped us and ask me to conduct the concert. So we contacted anyone and everyone we could think of to assemble an orchestra of musicians who had played under Uncle Will’s baton. The enormity of Will’s influence on Colorado musicians and beyond was quickly evident as musicians volunteered to play for this concert. Those who could not attend sent moving tributes in the form of letters and cards addressed to Will which were compiled and presented to him. With folks coming from all over Colorado and even outside the state we held one rehearsal, had a pot luck dinner, and then performed the concert. Dr. James Fittz performed Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, Nikki played a movement from J. S. Bach’s Concerto in F minor, and we ended the program with Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony. I will never forget conducting that concert. The musicians ranged from professionals to folks who hadn’t played their instrument in a few years. And yet it was a magical concert, and in the middle of conducting the Mendelssohn I realized “Uncle Will is letting me conduct HIS ORCHESTRA”. Many of the violinists were Will’s students, including Don Robinson and Kay Kirelis from the Colorado Springs Symphony. Maestro Schwartz’s style was imprinted on all of these fine violinists and was quite evident in the sound the violin sections produced. At the end of the concert, Uncle Will came to the podium to a long standing ovation. After the applause died down, Will addressed the orchestra. I don’t remember everything he said, but at the end he said thank you and goodbye to all of us present. We all hung on every word he spoke, and he addressed us with his typical wit, charm, and authority, commanding the room and letting us all know that he really was the Maestro. Maestro Will Schwartz will be missed for many reasons. I miss him because Uncle Will knew how to do it right, and because there are so few musicians in today’s world who will dedicate themselves to a community the way Maestro Will Schwartz did.

Tribute to Mr. Schwartz by Noriko Nikki Tsuchiya
Will Schwartz died after devoting over 60 years of his life to music and to the musical life of Fort Collins. I knew him for over 35 of those years, first as a student at CSU accompanying his violin students. Later, I was privileged to collaborate with Will on his faculty recitals at CSU. I still can’t quite remember how or why this came about but it expanded my musicianship immensely. From working with him, I learned flexibility and to be a nimble partner as he played with a great sense of freedom and spontaneity. Will had a wonderful elasticity of rhythm superimposed over an infallible beat. As time passed, we rarely needed to talk during rehearsals but played for hours on end, sometimes getting together and just sight-reading for fun. Later, after my first marriage, children, divorce and remarriage, we became friends. Actually he was more like a father figure to me. I will miss his kind eyes probing as he asked me if I was happy, advising me on my love life and his sly self-deprecating humor. He was a true original and not afraid to show it, something sorely missing in our copycat society. In recent years, he tried to get me to call him Will but then as now, he was and always will be Mr. Schwartz, great musician and mentor, ever the Maestro and forever my cherished friend.