Jaime Laredo - Jury President

In more than forty years before the public, Jaime Laredo has excelled in the multiple roles of soloist, conductor, recitalist 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 Stem; and last night it was Jaime Laredo.' His education and development were greatly influenced by private coaching with such musicians as Josef Gingold, Pablo Casals, Ivan Galamian and George Szell. At the age of seventeen, Jaime Laredo won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, launching his rise to international prominence.

This season, as he has for the past twenty-five years, Mr. Laredo will interweave solo and conducting dates with the dense chamber music schedule of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. At the start of this season Mr. Laredo dons multiple hats with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, where he was recently appointed music director. On September 27-29, October 3- 7 and October 13 he conducts and plays in programs of Vivaldi (Concerto in a minor for Two Violins, with Pierre Amoyal) Mozart (Violin Concerto No.4 in D Major) Saint-Saens (Concerto No.3 in b minor for Violin and Orchestra), Wagner (Siegfried Idyll), and Rachmaninov (Symphony No.2 in c minor) as well as a series of concerto appearances with various orchestras throughout the U.S. performing the Barber Concerto for Violin and Orchestra and the Mozart Violin Concerto No.3.

On January 12, 2002 he performs Elgar's Concerto for Violin Op. 61 with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra, Joel Levine conducting, and February 28-March 3 he plays with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and Jesus Lopez-Cobos in the Barber concerto. Mr. Laredo again picks up baton and violin to lead the Quebec Symphony Orchestra on March 19 in an all-Mozart program. On April 26-29 he is joined by former protege Leila Josefowicz when he conducts the St. Louis Symphony in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, bracketed by the Fourth Symphony and Tenth Symphony for Strings. On May 3 and 4 he returns to the Vermont Symphony for Zwilich's Concerto Grosso, Berlioz's Harold in Italy, and Vaughn Williams' Flos Campi, with Michael Tree as soloist.

On January 18 at the Philadelphia Convention Center Mr. Laredo shares the stage with his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, for a performance of the Dvorak Sextet in A Major with the Miami String Quartet. The group performs the work again at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in New York on February 20. Mr. Laredo and Ms. Robinson then give the world premiere of the Danielpour Double Concerto on April 20, with the Iris Symphony under the baton of Michael Stem, followed by a performance with the Fairfax Symphony and William Hudson on May 11. The work, written for the duo, will also be recorded for upcoming release on Arabesque Recordings.

Mr. Laredos' 2000-2001 season included solo engagements with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Cincinnati, San Jose, and Austin Symphony Orchestras. Conducting appearances included the Indianapolis Symphony, Buffalo, Helsinki and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestras. In past seasons he has been engaged and re-engaged by all of America's major orchestras, including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia, with such conductors as Barenboim, Mehta, Ozawa, Slatkin, Colin Davis and great conductors of the past, such as Ormandy, Leinsdorf, Stokowski, and Szell. Abroad, Mr. Laredo has performed as soloist and/or conductor with the London Symphony, the BBC Symphoy, 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, the "Italian" and "Scottish" Symphonies of Mendelssohn, Beethoven's Violin Concerto and recordings of Rossini overtures and Wagner's Siegfried Idyll.

Mr. Laredo has recorded close to one hundred discs. He has received the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize and has been afforded seven Grammy nominations. He won the Grammy Award for a disc of Brahms Piano Quartets which he performed with his frequent chamber music collaborators Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern and Yo-Yo Ma. Mr. Laredo's discs on CBS and RCA have included the complete Bach Sonatas with the late Glenn Gould and an Arabesque Recordings 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 recent releases include Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and Concertone with Cho-Liang Lin for Sony Classical and Piano Quartet recordings with Ax, Stern and Ma featuring the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Fauré. In May 2000, Arabesque Recordings released the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio's two-CD set of the chamber works of Maurice Ravel. This follows the complete trios and sonatas of Shostakovich, also on Arabesque.

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 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 is actively 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, together with Sharon Robinson, resides in Vermont.

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