“My father is the musician that I am always trying to be in some ways,” Julian says later. “Throughout his career, throughout the last years that I’ve actually known what’s going on, the time and absolute devotion to each piece, each score, each marking, is so meticulous—it’s eye-opening and intimidating.

“Every performance I’ve ever seen him do has been unbelievable for me. To see the process, too, to go to rehearsals, it’s just amazing. And when I play, sometimes I’ll ask, ‘Dad, listen to it.’”

Music runs deep in Julian Schwarz’s family. His maternal grandmother, Shirley Greitzer, taught piano at Juilliard. His grandfather, Sol Greitzer was a great violist. “I never knew my grandfather, but I recently discovered a live recording of him playing the Stamitz Viola Concerto with the New York Philharmonic, with Zubin Mehta,” Schwarz says.

The recording echoed his own musical instincts. “It was like a right of passage,” he says. “It gave my already established passions and goals new meaning.”

As he approaches high-school graduation, Schwarz already has laid the foundation for a remarkable career. In both 2007 and 2008, he won the prestigious Northwest Sinfonietta Youth Concerto Competition. The resulting performances as a soloist with Christophe Chagnard, music director of the Northwest Sinfonietta, led Schwarz to become assistant conductor under Chagnard with Seattle’s Lake Union Civic Orchestra.

“He is truly remarkable. It is easy to forget that Julian is as young as he is. He has a very thorough, deep understanding of music, which combined with a passionate personality makes him a very creative artist. He’s very passionate and engaged in whatever he plays,” Chagnard says. “He always takes a musical stand, which means he has a very clear idea of what he wants to do, and he does it without fear. He’s adventurous— he’s not afraid of taking risks by pushing the boundaries of expression.

“From the time he was a young child, Julian attended rehearsals of the Seattle Symphony. So he has a huge capacity to absorb what he hears. Julian has a musical wisdom beyond his years. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the orchestral literature.”

While very young, Schwarz began his studies with David Tonkonogui, a longtime section cellist at the Seattle Symphony. “He had a certain way of teaching that put the love of music before everything else,” says Schwarz, who cherished the approach, inviting subsequent teachers—including Seattle Symphony principal cellist Ray Davis—to refine his technical capacity.

Tonkonogui passed away when Schwarz was only 12. The Seattle organization Music of Remembrance, founded to honor Holocaust victims and survivors, established the David Tonkonogui Memorial Award in his honor. As the first recipient, Schwarz performed a piece composed by his father for cello and string orchestra entitled “In Memoriam,” an elegy dedicated to Tonkonogui. A critically acclaimed 2005 recording of the young Schwarz performing his father’s work appears on a 2008 release on the Naxos label.

Schwarz now studies with Seattle cellist Toby Saks and with Lynn Harrell, who met Julian through his father years ago. “He’s about the most gratifying young cellist I’ve worked with in 20 years,” Harrell says. “Julian has these wonderful new musical ideas, but it’s not because he’s searching for them. It’s because they’ve already manifested in him as a musician. Part of the reason for that is very broad and deep exposure to all other types of musical performance. He’s dealing with a much larger database than almost anyone of his age that I’ve worked with.

“His technical mastery, very quickly, is going to surpass those people who have so-called greater natural facility, because he has a more exact musical desire and reason for the solutions that he wants to find.”

Listeners nationwide will have opportunities to hear this gifted young cellist in concert over the next few years. His schedule will take him from San Diego to Cape Cod in coming months. Andrew Grossman, senior vice president of Columbia Artists Management, has arranged for Schwarz to appear as guest soloist with the legendary Moscow State Radio Symphony Orchestra.

“We made room for him on the tour to introduce him to the American public,” Grossman says. “He is one of the most extraordinary young talents I have heard in the 45 years I have been in this business.”

Schwarz’s success derives from his attitude and discipline, Harrell says. But his musical immersion at home is striking. His mother, Jody, is a former flutist, and musical opinions sail across the dinner table. When seeking advice, Schwarz says, his father can presciently direct him to intimate details of a score before even seeing it. Schwarz also admires his father’s work ethic of intense preparation, freeing him to openly emanate passion and emotion from the podium.

Memorizing pieces, says the younger Schwarz, makes him feel more free.

And he has his father to inspire him.

“It’s really integrity that, above all, is the most inspiring thing about him,” Julian says, “because everything is done with such care, such meticulous effort, that once he gets on the podium, everything has been crafted perfectly so that he can completely open himself up and convey his passion through the orchestra and to the audience. And that only can be accomplished after all the work has been done. In some ways, that’s what I like to do in my playing.

“I like to know a piece so well.”