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 11 with the San Francisco Symphony, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics, and fellow musicians with his passionate and polished performances. His education and development were greatly influenced by his teachers, Josef Gingold and Ivan Galamian, as well as by private coaching with eminent masters Pablo Casals and George Szell. At the age of 17, Jaime Laredo won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, launching his rise to international prominence.

In the 2013–2014 season, Mr. Laredo continues to tour both as a soloist and as a member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. 2013 also marked the second year of Mr. Laredo’s tenure as a member of the violin faculty at The Cleveland Institute of Music. Mr. Laredo has conducted and soloed with the Chicago, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and St. Louis Symphonies; Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics; and and the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, among many others. He has held the position of Music Director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra since 1999. Abroad, Mr. Laredo has performed with the London Symphony, BBC Symphony, English Chamber Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Royal Philharmonic, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. His numerous best-selling recordings with the SCO include Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and “Italian” and “Scottish” Symphonies, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Rossini overtures, and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll.

The 2011–2012 season marked Jaime Laredo’s 35th anniversary as violinist of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Founded by Mr. Laredo, Sharon Robinson, and pianist Joseph Kalichstein in 1976, the Trio performs regularly at Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York, and as ensemble in residence at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Named Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year in 2002, the trio has toured internationally to major cities including Lisbon, Hamburg, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Helsinki, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, and Melbourne.

For 15 years, Mr. Laredo was violist of the piano quartet comprising Laredo’s close colleagues and chamber music collaborators pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Isaac Stern, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Together, the quartet recorded nearly the entire piano quartet repertoire, including the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, Fauré, and Brahms, for which they won a Grammy Award.

Mr. Laredo has recorded close to one hundred discs and has won seven Grammy nominations. Mr. Laredo’s recordings have included the complete Bach Sonatas with the late Glenn Gould and an album of duos with Ms. Robinson featuring works by Handel, Kodaly, Mozart, and Ravel. His releases on the Dorian label include Schubert’s complete works for violin and piano with Stephanie Brown. The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio recently released the complete Schubert and Beethoven trios.

Recognized internationally as a master violin teacher, Mr. Laredo has fostered the education of renowned violinists including Jennifer Koh, Leila Josefowitz, Hillary Hahn, Ivan Chan, Soovin Kim, Pamela Frank, and Bella Hristova. After 35 years of teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and seven years at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music, Mr. Laredo now teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music, 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.

As former Artistic Director of New York’s renowned Chamber Music at the Y series, Mr. Laredo created an important forum for chamber music performances and 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, he has also been involved at Tanglewood, Aspen, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, and the Hollywood Bowl, as well as festivals in Austria, England, Finland, Greece, Israel, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.