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Ania Bard-Schwarz, violin
Dr. Ania Bard-Schwarz was born in Poznan, Poland to a professional musical family. Ania’s mother was a violinist, choral and orchestra conductor, and later on a music critic and her father was a trumpet soloist and a music professor. Ania started playing the violin at the age of 6. At 8, she performed solo with the Great Poland Symphony Orchestra. At 13, she performed with her older, violinist sister at the Mirror Hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. At 14, she became the youngest student at the Maastricht Conservatory of Music in Holland and performed the Saint-Saens Violin Concerto with the Eindhoven Philharmonic. At 16, Ania graduated from the “School for Talented Youth” in Poznań, Poland, and subsequently received a full scholarship to study at the University of Kansas with the Lithuanian-Israeli teacher Ben Sayevich. After earning her B.M. degree, she continued her studies on full scholarship at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston with the late Eric Rosenblith, earning her M.M. degree in 1999. After graduation, Ania continued her studies with the late Roman Totenberg, of Boston University.
Ania won the first Gregor Piatigorsky Foundation Competition in 1999 followed by 25 recitals across the USA. Between 2001-2006, Ania performed extensively across Europe as a freelance member of the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Polish Chamber Philharmonic, Sinfonietta Cracovia, and a full-time member of Camerata Stuttgart and the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart. She also performed recitals at Festivals across Europe and Israel, sponsored by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Polish Embassies. In 2008, Ania was invited to serve as the first woman Concertmaster of Orquesta Filarmonica de Teatro Municipal de Santiago in Chile. Upon returning to the United States, Ania earned her D.M.A. degree from the University of North Texas in 2014, where she served as an Assistant to Professor Julia Bushkova. Sicne 2010, Dr. Bard has been the Concertmaster of Plano and Irving Symphony Orchestras in the Dallas metroplex and has just been named their Concertmaster Emeritus. As a Baroque violinist, Dr. Bard performed as a member of Orchestra of New Spain and Texas Camerata between 2010-2018. Dr. Bard served as Violin Faculty at the International Chamber Music Festival in Positano in Italy in 2010 and 2011. Ania Bard married her husband, David Schwarz, a Music Theory Professor in 2013. Dr. Bard-Schwarz is currently an Adjunct Professor of Violin at Texas Woman’s University and the University of North Texas in Denton, TX. For more information, please visit: www.aniabardschwarz.com