Leon Schwartz

Leon Schwartz, Yiddish אריה–לייב שווארץ was a klezmer and classical music violinist born in the village Karapchiv, Austria-Hungary near the town of Vashkivtsi in today’s Vyzhnytsia Region of the Bukovina area of Ukraine. Raised in a Hasidic family, Schwartz first learned to play violin from local Jewish, Ukrainian and Romani fiddlers who frequented the village tavern kept by his father, and began to perform occasionally in addition to working in the village post office. In 1916, as the First World War eastern front reached Bukovina, he and his family fled and lived as refugees in Jungbunzlau, Austrian Bohemia. Returning home at the end of the war, Schwartz began to play professionally at Jewish, Ukrainian, Romani, Polish and German weddings and other occasions throughout the Bukovina region, in a band with his younger brothers Burekh and Duvid as well as with local Ukrainian and Romani musicians Halynko Marianchuk, Kolio Tyslycki, and Aleko Yeremichuk. Schwartz made more than one trip to the U.S in the 1920s before settling in New York City in 1927, where he studied classical violin with Max Jacobs and Elias Malkin. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Sc...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)