Jaime Laredo

Performing for over five decades before audiences across the globe, Jaime Laredo has excelled in the multiple roles of soloist, conductor, recitalist, pedagogue, and chamber musician. Since his stunning orchestral debut at the age of eleven with the San Francisco Symphony, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics and fellow musicians with his passionate and polished performances. That debut inspired one critic to write, “In the 1920’s it was Yehudi Menuhin; in the 1930’s it was Isaac Stern; and last night it was Jaime Laredo.” His education and development were greatly influenced by his teachers Josef Gingold and Ivan Galamian, as well as by private coachings with eminent masters Pablo Casals and George Szell. At the age of seventeen, Jaime Laredo won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, launching his rise to international prominence. With 2009 marking the 50th anniversary of his prize, he was honored to sit on the Jury for the final round of the Competition.

The 2009-2010 season includes several conducting and solo engagements, appearing as conductor and soloist with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and conducting the Vermont Symphony Orchestra with soloist Andre Watts. Mr. Laredo also regularly collaborates with his wife Sharon Robinson in concert. This season, they perform Richard Danielpour’s A Child’s Reliquary for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, which they will also record as the culminating piece for an ambitious project to premiere and record newly commissioned double concerti across the U.S. They also performed the work at the Atlantic Music Festival in July 2009. The two have recently been named the Artistic Directors of the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati, Ohio, a distinction for which they were hand-picked.

During past seasons, Mr. Laredo conducted and performed with the Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others. Abroad, Mr. Laredo has performed with the London Symphony, the BBC Symphony, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Royal Philharmonic, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which he led on two American tours and in their Hong Kong Festival debut. His numerous recordings with the SCO include Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (which stayed on the British best-seller charts for over a year), Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Italian” and “Scottish” Symphonies, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, and recordings of Rossini overtures and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll.

Jaime Laredo is violinist of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, founded 33 years ago by Mr. Laredo, Ms. Robinson, and pianist Joseph Kalichstein. The Trio performs regularly at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y in New York, and the Kennedy Center. They have toured internationally to cities that include Lisbon, Hamburg, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Helsinki, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Sydney, and Melbourne. In the 2009-2010 season, they will concertize in Berne, Switzerland, at South Korea’s Seoul Spring Festival, and in London for a return performance at Wigmore Hall. On the recording front, E1 Music (formerly KOCH Records) released the first 2 Discs of a 4-Disc set of the Brahms’ Cycle of complete piano trios in 2008; in the fall of 2009, the second set of the set will be released. In 2001, the trio was named Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year 2002.

For fifteen years, Mr. Laredo was violist of a Piano Quartet with renowned pianist Emanuel Ax, celebrated violinist Isaac Stern, and distinguished cellist Yo-Yo Ma, his close colleagues and chamber music collaborators. Together the Quartet recorded nearly the entire piano quartet repertoire on the SONY Classical label, including the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, Fauré, and Brahms, for which he won a Grammy Award.

Mr. Laredo has recorded close to one hundred discs, received the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize, and has been awarded seven Grammy nominations. Mr. Laredo’s discs on CBS and RCA have included the complete Bach Sonatas with the late Glenn Gould and a KOCH International Classics album of duos with Ms. Robinson featuring works by Handel, Kodaly, Mozart and Ravel. His releases on the audiophile Dorian label include Schubert’s complete works for violin and piano with Stephanie Brown, and Virtuoso!, a collection of favorite violin encores with pianist Margo Garrett. Other releases include Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Concertone with Cho-Liang Lin for Sony. In May 2000, KOCH released the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio’s two-CD set of the chamber works of Maurice Ravel, to follow the complete trios and sonatas of Shostakovich.

Recognized internationally for his teaching methods, Mr. Laredo has fostered the education of violinists that include Leila Josefowitz, Hilary Hahn, Pamela Frank, Jennifer Koh, and Ivan Chan. After 35 years of teaching at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Mr. Laredo now holds a chaired professorship at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where his wife Sharon Robinson also holds a teaching position. Additionally, Mr. Laredo is the conductor of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, which brings young musicians from around the world to the stage every December.

In demand worldwide as a conductor and a soloist, Mr. Laredo has held the position of Music Director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra since 1999. He is also Artistic Director of the Brandenburg Ensemble, Artistic Advisor at the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and Artistic Director of the Chamber Music at the Y series at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

As Artistic Director of New York’s renowned Chamber Music at the Y series, Mr. Laredo has created an important forum for chamber music performances which has developed a devoted following. His stewardships of the annual New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis have become beloved educational pillars of the string community. A principal figure at the Marlboro Music Festival in years past and more recently with the Aspen Music Festival, he has also been involved at Tanglewood, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, and the Hollywood Bowl, as well as the festivals in Italy, Spain, Finland, Greece, Israel, Austria, Switzerland and England.

Born in Bolivia, Jaime Laredo resides in Vermont and Indiana with his wife Sharon Robinson.