Leon Schwartz, Yiddish אריה–לייב שווארץ (Arye-Leyb Shvarts) (1901-1990) 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.
In 1916, as the First World War eastern front reached Bukovina, he and his family fled and lived as refugees in Jungbunzlau (Mladá Boleslav), 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.
In addition to orchestral and chamber music, he played weddings and other occasions professionally in Jewish and other ensembles, with trumpeter Max Peters (Petrowski) and clarinetist Shloimke Beckerman among others, and taught violin privately for many years.
Along with much of Schwartz's repertoire, the piece is performed and taught today by several violinists from the klezmer revitalization, including Strauss, Alpert, Steven Greenman and Mark Kovnatsky.