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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 1920s it was Yehudi Menuhin; in the 1930s 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, 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.

During the 2011/2012 season, Laredo celebrates his 70th birthday with performances at the 92nd Street Y with colleagues, family and friends, and the world premiere of a commission by Richard Danielpour dedicated to Jaime and his wife Sharon Robinson, entitled Inventions on a Marriage.

Laredo has conducted and performed with the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others. Abroad, 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.

The 2011/2012 season also marks Jaime Laredo’s 35th anniversary as the violinist of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. The Trio, which includes pianist Joseph Kalichstein and Laredo’s wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, celebrates this milestone with a national tour and commissions by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, André Previn, and Stanley Silverman. Named Musical American’s Ensemble of the Year in 2002, the Trio performs regularly at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y in New York, and the Kennedy Center.

For fifteen years, 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.

Laredo has recorded close to one hundred discs, received the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize, and has been awarded seven Grammy nominations. In May 2000, KOCH released the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio's two-CD set of the chamber works of Maurice Ravel, and a 4-disc set of the complete Brahms Piano Trios was released in 2009. This year the KLR Trio will release the complete Schubert trios on Bridge Records. Laredo and Robinson are the featured soloists on a Vermont Symphony Orchestra album entitled “Triple Doubles,” which includes three double concertos dedicated to them, scheduled for release in October. Another recording project in the works celebrates Laredo’s relationship with former student Jennifer Koh: an album called “Two x Four,” which includes works by Bach, Philip Glass, Anna Clyne, and David Ludwig.

Recognized internationally as a sought after violin teacher, Laredo has fostered the education of such violinists as Leila Josefowitz, Hillary Hahn, Pamela Frank, Jennifer Koh, Soovin Kim, and Bella Hristova. 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 also holds a teaching position. In addition, 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.

As Artistic Director of New York's renowned Chamber Music at the Y series, 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 numerous festivals abroad. This season he opens La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, and returns to the Orchestra National de Lyon as conductor/soloist.

Born in Bolivia, Jaime Laredo and his wife Sharon Robinson joined CIM's faculty in fall 2012.

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