My interest in playing music actually came in a fit of rage. I was maybe 12 years old and I had this one friend that seemed to be able to play anything. Sometimes I would go over his house and he would be playing clarinet, other times a saxophone, then maybe a trumpet, or a flute or whatever else had come his way. Anyway, this one day when I came over, he pulled out a keyboard and started playing that too. The little competitor in me got pissed, went home, found a keyboard of my own, and started learning how to play it.
Pretty soon I was on the Saturday morning piano lesson track and I changed from playing music out of rage to playing it out of love and a sense of discovery. My father [a wonderful guitarist himself] told me that I was going to take guitar lessons as well. I fought but he won and we started packing those in right next to my piano studies. Life continues, guitar takes the driver's seat, I start playing with friends, performing in talent shows, writing my own solo guitar pieces, and generally forgetting that life without music was once a reality for me.
In the 17 years since then I've gone through the new age solo guitarist phase, the singer-songwriter phase, the high school rock band phase, the college jazz major phase [Bowling Green State University alumni], the venue packing jam band multi-instrumentalist phase, the young jazzbo in Chicago trying to make it on his own phase, the rock bass player playing every room in Chicago phase, the world music phase, the everyone's favorite sideman phase, and now the "boundaries are an illusion and I refuse to hold myself to any single category but I sure as hell plan on playing my heart out in every single situation" phase.
These days I'm enjoying musical communion with world music/avant-garde jazz group Jazz Apocalypse, Chicago kirtan bands like Devi 2000 and the Amy Ananda Bliss Tribe, a lovely duo project with classical vocalist Eliza Shin where we perform 15th through 17th century lute songs, freelance performance on jazz bass, and countless solo guitar efforts in every situation I can squeeze my way into.
Peace,
Dylan Schwartz
