Composer Jay Schwartz was born in 1965 in San Diego, California, and immigrated in 1989 to Germany. Renowned orchestras and ensembles have commissioned and performed his works, including: the New York Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Festival Strings Lucerne, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI (Italian National Orchestra), Tonkuenstlerorchester Vienna, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir (SWR), the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra (WDR) Cologne, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Frankfurt (HR), the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Bavarian State Opera Munich, the Salzburg Opera, the Staatskapelle Weimar, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Turin Philharmonic Orchestra, Avanti Chamber Orchestra of Finnland, and the Remix Ensemble in Portugal. His works have been commissioned by and performed at international festivals and venues such as the NYPhil Biennial, the Salzburg Festival, the Venice Biennale, the Munich Opera Festival, the Philharmonie Cologne, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, WienModern, the Documenta Kassel, the Lucerne Festival, the International Computer Music Conference in Sweden, festival presences radio france paris, festival nova helsinki, the Ultraschall Festival Berlin, the Witten Festival for New Chamber Music, the Festival Musicadhoy in Madrid, and the Vancouver New Music Festival. In 2000 he won the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Composition Prize from the City of Cologne. He is a three time recipient of the Southwest German Radio Heinrich Strobel Fellowship for Electronic Music. A Cd of his works has been released from the label Wergo and the German Music Council. From 2014 to 2016 he was an artist in residence at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. He received the Rome-Prize from the German Ministry of Culture and was an artist in residence at the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome in 2017/2018. In 2019 he was a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy. Jay Schwartz's works are published by Universal Edition, Vienna. "The music of Jay Schwartz is hedonistic. You listen to it, and when you're finished you can't wait to listen to it again. His SoundCloud page becomes an almost physical addiction. It envelopes you in shimmering glissandi of infinite complexity, teases you with the briefest glimpses of tonal intervals, and rewards you with the endorphin payload of its potent climaxes. Unlike so much other new music, these rewards are both immediate and powerful." Jeffrey Arlo Brown, VAN MAGAZINE "Jay Schwartz's compositions employ aspects of the physics of sound and utilize tonality in the context of the physics of organic harmony, making use of the overtone spectrum, microtonality, and glissandi in a poetic context with a captivating sensuous drawing power and an unabashed emotional disposition. Schwartz integrates these acoustical events in a clear, deliberately prolonged, coherent form, which generates a persistent metamorphosis as well as a conscious dramatic plan. Within these processes of continuously evolving unbroken development, cathartic events are aspired to, which culminate in concrete, usually harmonic, thematic material. Schwartz's homogeneous instrumentations uphold his ideas of clarity, simplicity and of organic sound. As in his compositions, Schwartz intends in his sound-installations to capture the archaic aspects of sound and implements phenomena of physics such as resonance transfer, magnetism, and infrasonics. In Music for Autosonic Gongs the instrument remains untouched and resonates on its own accord through an electroacoustical process. The sounds are purely non-electronic and organic. The powerful acoustical effect is a synthesis of the archaic with the avant-garde, a fundamental idea of Schwartz's work." Eric Marinitsch, Universal Edition