He began his earliest musical training in Ohio and pursued his studies in France with Nadia Boulanger and at The Juilliard School with Vincent Persichetti. While earning his B.M., M.M. and D.M.A. degrees at Juilliard, he was the recipient of several prizes, including the Joseph Machlis Prize for outstanding distinction in composition. During his final year of study, Dr. Smith was appointed to the faculty of The Juilliard School, where he taught from 1980-86. Previously, he was on the composition faculty of the Boston Conservatory.

An award-winning and prolific composer, Larry Alan Smith is represented and published by the Theodore Presser Company. This relationship also includes exclusive worldwide distribution and representation of the Tallow Tree Music Publishing catalog. Tallow Tree is a publishing company that Dr. Smith formed in 2005. Bourne Music, E.B. Marks and Colla Voce Music also publish several of his works. He is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and he serves on several regional, national, and international boards. He is currently the President of both the Vincent Persichetti Society and the Lotte Lehmann Foundation. 

In addition to his primary life as a composer, Dr. Smith also maintains an active performing schedule. He has guest conducted numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles in England, Brazil, Italy, Poland, Croatia, Germany, and the United States. In 2013, he formed a music cooperative known as Aternus, and he serves as its Artistic Director. Dr. Smith is an experienced pianist who frequently performs his own works, and he has lectured extensively at institutions around the world.

As an arts executive, he served as the Artistic and Executive Director of Wintergreen Performing Arts (and the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival) from 2006-14, President of the School of American Ballet from 1997-2000, and Dean of the School of Music at the North Carolina School of the Arts from 1986-90. For 31 years (1990-2021), Dr. Smith served as Professor of Music Composition at The Hartt School of the University of Hartford where he twice provided transformative leadership as Dean (1990-97 and 2018-21). He has served as the curator of The Hartt School’s prestigious Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series (2016-21), Artistic Director of the Associazione Musicale Peligna in Sulmona, Italy, and Music Director of Bowen McCauley Dance in Washington, DC. 

Larry Alan Smith was a Group XI Fellow of the Kellogg National Fellowship Program, a program of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation designed to expand the nation’s pool of capable leaders. He is the President of Berg Associates, Inc., a Connecticut corporation providing a variety of arts-related services to individuals and organizations, and he serves as a Senior Advisor for Arts Consulting Group.

Dr. Smith is a prolific poet who resides in Avon, Connecticut, with his wife, pianist Marguerita Oundjian Smith. They have four sons. Larry Alan Smith is a citizen of both the United States and Italy. For more information, visit www.larryalansmith.com.

As a chamber musician, he has performed at the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel, London’s Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the White Nights Festival in Saint Petersburg, the Dresden Music Festival in Germany, and the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. He has been presented in recital in Omaha on the Tuesday Musical Club series, New Orleans by the Friends of Music and at the Louvre Museum in Paris. He has also given concerts at the OK Mozart, Moritzburg, Caramoor, Music@Menlo, La Jolla SummerFest, Mainly Mozart, Seattle Chamber Music, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Moab Music festivals. Mr. Sussmann has performed with many of today’s leading artists including Itzhak Perlman, Menahem Pressler, Gary Hoffman, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Wu Han, David Finckel and Jan Vogler.

After making his concerto debut at the age of 11 with the Seattle Symphony with his father, Gerard Schwarz, on the podium, Mr. Schwarz made his US touring debut with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2010. Since being awarded first prize at the inaugural Schoenfeld International String Competition in 2013, he has led an active career as soloist, performing with the symphony orchestras of Annapolis, Boise, Buffalo, Charlotte, Columbus, Des Moines, Hartford, Jacksonville, Louisville, Memphis, Modesto, Omaha, Puerto Rico, Richmond, Rochester, San Antonio, Sarasota, Seattle, Syracuse, Toledo, Tucson, Virginia, West Virginia and Wichita, among others. Internationally, he made his Australian debut with the Queensland Symphony, his Mexican debuts with the Boca del Rio Philharmonic in Veracruz and the Mexico City Philharmonic with frequent collaborator Jorge Mester, and his Hong Kong debut at the Intimacy of Creativity Festival. He has also appeared at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Schwarz performs extensively in recital with pianist Marika Bournaki. In 2016 the Schwarz-Bournaki duo was awarded first prize at the inaugural Boulder International String Competition’s “The Art of Duo”, and subsequently embarked on an extensive 10-recital tour of China in March 2017. Mr. Schwarz is a founding member of the New York based Frisson Ensemble (a mixed nonet of winds and strings), and the Mile-End Trio with violinist Jeff Multer and Ms. Bournaki. He performs frequently at Bargemusic in Brooklyn with violinist Mark Peskanov, on the Frankly Music Series in Milwaukee with violinist Frank Almond, as a member of the Palladium Chamber Players in St. Petersburg FL, and has appeared at the Cape Cod, Orcas Island and the Seattle Chamber Music Festivals. In addition, he is the co-coordinator of chamber music at Eastern Music Festival, programming the repertoire for the Tuesday evening chamber music series.

Julian Schwarz is an ardent supporter of new music and has premiered concertos by Richard Danielpour and Samuel Jones; the Jones concerto was recorded with the All Star Orchestra for public television in 2012 and subsequently released as a DVD on Naxos. In the 17-18 season, he gave the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s first Cello Concerto with the Toledo Symphony followed by performances of the work with a consortium of five other orchestras. Additional premieres include recital works by Paul Frucht, Scott Ordway, Jonathan Cziner, Gavin Fraser, Alex Weiser, Ofer Ben-Amots, and the US Premiere of Dobrinka Tabakova’s Cello Concerto. No stranger to the recording studio, he has recorded Bright Sheng’s “Northern Lights” for Naxos, the complete cello/piano works by Ernest Bloch for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, and a CD of concertos with the Seattle Symphony.

A devoted teacher, Mr. Schwarz serves as Asst. Professor of Cello at Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University (Winchester, VA) and on the artist faculty of New York University (NYU Steinhardt). He spends his summers teaching and performing at the Eastern Music Festival (Greensboro, NC). Past faculty appointments include artist-in-residence at the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance (Nova Scotia, Canada), faculty teaching assistant to Joel Krosnick at The Juilliard School, and Artist-In-Residence at the pianoSonoma Festival.

Born in Seattle, WA, Julian Schwarz studied at the Academy of Music Northwest and the Lakeside School. His studies continued at the Colburn School in Los Angeles under Ronald Leonard, and he then moved to New York City to study with mentor Joel Krosnick at The Juilliard School, earning his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Other influential teachers include the late David Tonkonogui, Toby Saks, Lynn Harrell, Neal Cary, and chamber music mentors Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, Jonathan Feldman, Toby Appel and Paul Coletti. Mr. Schwarz plays a Neapolitan cello made by Gennaro Gagliano in 1743 and uses an American bow made by Paul Martin Siefried. He is an active contributor to Strings Magazine’s Artist Blog and sits on the music committee of the National Arts Club. A Pirastro artist, he endorses and plays the “Perpetual” medium and edition sets of cello strings and as well as Melos Rosin.

www.julianschwarz.com

Marika Bournaki’s current season includes returns to Florida’s The SYMPHONIA and Michigan’s Jackson Symphony Orchestra, her debuts with Minnesota’s Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra and California’s Modesto Symphony Orchestra and a chamber music program with San Antonio’s Olmos Ensemble.

Marika Bournaki has appeared as guest soloist with the symphony orchestras of Bozeman, Duluth Superior, Springfield (MO), Topeka, Montréal and St. Petersburg (Russia), along with Maryland’s Chesapeake Orchestra, The SYMPHONIA (FL), Romania’s Timisoara Filharmonica, Switzerland’s Verbier Chamber Orchestra and Canada’s Orchestre Métropolitain and Sinfonia Toronto. In addition to a benefit recital for the Glenn Gould Foundation at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, she has been presented in solo recitals and chamber music collaborations throughout the United States, Canada and the world, including Belgium, England, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Switzerland and South Korea. Of special note was her survey of Beethoven’s complete 32-work piano sonata cycle, presented by the distinguished Bargemusic in Brooklyn.

A devoted chamber musician, Marika Bournaki performs regularly at Brooklyn’s Bargemusic, the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival and the Frankly Music series in Milwaukee, while serving on the faculties of the Eastern Music Festival and Canada’s Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance. She tours internationally with duo partner cellist Julian Schwarz, and together won 1st prize in the 2016 Boulder International Chamber Music Competition’s “The Art of Duo.” Ms. Bournaki is also a member of the Mile-End Trio with Mr. Schwarz and violinist Jeffrey Multer.

The award-winning documentary “I am Not a Rock Star,” featuring Marika Bounaki and directed by Bobbi Jo Hart, has captivated international audiences of all ages. The feature-length film chronicles Ms. Bournaki’s evolution as an artist from the age of 12 to 20. A runaway success at multiple film festivals throughout the world, screenings of “I am Not a Rock Star” and solo performances were recently presented in Chicago, Dallas, Memphis, Miami, Napa Valley, Palm Springs, Toronto and Vancouver, as well as in Greece, México and Spain. The film has also been seen in Greece (ERT), The Netherlands (NTS), Norway (NRK), Sweden (SVT) the
United Kingdom (BBC4), Australia (SBS) and New Zealand (Sky). The documentary is the recipient of awards for Best Arts Documentary and Best Editing from the 2014 Canadian Screen Awards.

Marika Bournaki’s innovative approach to her art and performance is reflected in a number of multimedia projects intended to reach out to new audiences. Additionally, her role as Ambassador to the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal’s summer event, “A Cool Classical Journey,” afforded new and stimulating ways to share her music with the public.

Marika Bournaki holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, where her principal teachers were Yoheved Kaplinsky and Matti Raekallio. She and her husband, the renowned cellist Julian Schwarz, make their home in Virginia.

www.marikabournaki.com