Influenced by Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane and Joe Henderson as well as Dexter Gordon, Anton Schwartz is a melodic tenor saxophonist who has played around the San Francisco Bay Area quite a bit in the 1990s. Although identified with the Bay Area, Schwartz is actually a native of New York, where he started playing jazz on the clarinet at 12 before switching to the sax at 14. In high school, he formed a group that included guitarist Peter Bernstein and organist Larry Goldings and sat in with Woody Herman and Lionel Hampton. Schwartz moved to Cambridge, MA. in 1985 to attend Harvard, where he studied math and philosophy and played in the Harvard Jazz Band. In 1989, he moved to California to attend Stanford, from which he earned a master's degree. After graduating, Schwartz became a permanent resident of the Bay Area, where he led his own groups and worked as a sideman for pianist Mark Levine and singer Kitty Margolis. Schwartz was 30 when, in 1997, he recorded his debut album, When Music Calls, for his own Anton Jazz label. Slow Lane followed exactly two years later.