Professor Gerard Schwarz, the illustrious conductor and music director of the Frost Symphony Orchestra (FSO) and the Palm Beach Symphony; and his former graduate conducting student, triple Frost School alumnus Carlos “Carlitos” Lopez, have received multiple 2025 Emmy® Award nominations for broadcast productions of ambitious concerts from both musical ensembles.
Two are for the FSO’s performance of Beethoven’s magnificent 9th Symphony, which South Florida PBS station WPBT captured in its 2024 performance at the Maurice Gusman Concert Hall. The program aired on WPBT and was subsequently broadcast on 262 PBS stations across the U.S.
Together the performance and broadcast were a significant achievement that brought the Frost School’s rendition of one of the most important pieces in the classical music canon to a national audience. Schwarz organized the concert for the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s masterwork, leading the FSO with the combined Frost School choirs, and brought the idea of a broadcast production to WPBT, with which he has fostered a growing relationship.
The Frost School and WPBT production earned the Frost School of Music an Emmy® nomination for Special Event Coverage – Edited, with Schwarz listed as producer, together with Dean Shelton G. Berg.
Lopez, a successful pop music producer who was mentored by Schwarz while earning his 2023 doctorate in classical conducting, was nominated for Audio - Live or Post Production, for the 9th Symphony production. This is the latest project in which Lopez, who earned a bachelor’s in production and a master’s in classical composition at the Frost School, has combined his talents and training across two musical worlds.
Both men also received Emmy nominations for a broadcast of the Palm Beach Symphony’s “The Carnival of MORE Animals,” a unique adaptation of the beloved Camille Saint-Saëns orchestral work for children that expanded the chamber work to a full orchestra and added over a dozen Florida animals. Schwarz, who arranged and conducted the piece, was nominated for Musical Composition/Arrangement, while Lopez was nominated again for Audio – Live or Post Production.
All the nominations are for the Suncoast Chapter of the Emmy® Awards, one of 19 regional Emmy® chapters in the U.S., which gives awards to television markets throughout Florida, as well as in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Puerto Rico.
The 21 winners of the Suncoast Emmy® Awards will be announced in a gala in Hollywood, Florida, on Dec. 6.
