Timothy Schwarz played for the College of Performing Arts Faculty Spotlight last Wednesday in Boyd Recital Hall. The concert, titled “Not for the Privileged: Compositions from the Underground,” was part of the music department’s ongoing social justice series and featured compositions by minority composers. 

Schwarz works as an assistant professor and is Head of Strings at Rowan. Besides being a professional musician, he also works as artistic director for a group he founded called Techne Music, for performance and education in chamber music.

Schwarz, guest pianist Dan Weiser and a few other musicians played throughout the hour and a half set. 

Schwarz and Weiser, who have been friends for 25 years, played the violin and piano, respectively. They have played hundreds of concerts together throughout that time, spanning multiple countries. They won the Artistic Ambassador Competition for duos in 1995, which sent them on a tour throughout 15 countries in South America, Asia and Africa to represent American classical music.

“I was 28 years old when I first did this and it just completely opened my mind to different cultures,” Schwarz said.

He did two tours after without Weiser. This experience led him to start actively bringing people from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds into his classroom, as well as bringing the music of minority composers to concerts like the Faculty Spotlight. 

Throughout the night, over 30 people came for the performance.

Lia Boncoeur, a junior music performance major who plays clarinet, came out because she likes to watch violinists play.

“I like the emotion in the way violinists perform because it’s not just in the music,” she said. “It’s also in their facial expressions and body movements.”

The second to last composer of the night was Xavier Foley, a double bassist originally from Georgia. He has played as a soloist in seven different orchestras and symphonies and as a chamber musician at different festivals.

His intensity showed on stage when he had to pull hairs off his bow that started coming loose from the strength with which he played.

“He looked like he was having an out of body experience,” Boncoeur said, referring to Foley’s passionate performance.

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