His teachers included Earl Kim at Harvard, Jacob Druckman at Yale, and Betsy Jolas at Tanglewood.
Swafford has written columns on music and other subjects in Slate, and is heard as a commentator on NPR and the BBC.
His biography Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph in its first week appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.
Swafford's music, which is highly lyrical and moves freely between tonality and atonality, has been called New Romantic in style.
In 2012 cellist Rhonda Rider premiered his solo cello work The Silence at Yuma Point, part of a commissioning project of pieces inspired by the Grand Canyon (where Swafford has been a frequent hiker).