Carnegie Hall

For more than six decades, Jaime Laredo has excelled as solo violinist, conductor, recitalist, pedagogue, and chamber musician. Since his orchestral debut with the San Francisco Symphony at the age of 11, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics, and fellow musicians with his passionate and polished performances. At the age of 17, he won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, launching his rise to international prominence.

In the 2021–2022 season, Mr. Laredo tours the United States as a conductor, soloist, and member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, which celebrates its 45th anniversary this season with new works by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Nokuthula Ngwenyama. Earlier this year, Sony Classical celebrated Mr. Laredo’s extraordinary recording legacy with the release of a 23-CD box set.

Other conducting and performance highlights include the Chicago, Boston, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras; San Francisco Symphony; Los Angeles and New York philharmonics; The Cleveland Orchestra; and The Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others. With his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, he has given acclaimed premieres of double concertos by André Previn and Christopher Brubeck written specifically for the couple. Abroad, Mr. Laredo has appeared with the London and BBC symphony orchestras; Scottish Chamber Orchestra (with whom he made numerous best-selling recordings); and orchestras in France, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Mr. Laredo has recorded nearly 100 albums, including a Grammy Award–winning disc of Brahms piano quartets with Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern, and Yo-Yo Ma. His recordings range from the complete Bach sonatas with Glenn Gould (Sony Classical) to recent premiere recordings of double concertos with violinist Jennifer Koh (Two x Four on Cedille Records) and Ms. Robinson (Triple Doubles on Bridge Records), and award-winning recordings with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio.

Mr. Laredo’s stewardships of the New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall (which he has conducted for 28 years) and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis have become beloved educational pillars of the music community. This year is Mr. Laredo’s 10th at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is co–artistic director of Cincinnati’s Linton Chamber Music, and recently completed 20 years as music director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. He was artistic director of the Chamber Music at 92Y series in New York for 40 years.

Born in Bolivia, Mr. Laredo resides in Guilford, Vermont, and Cleveland, Ohio.

Venezuelan violinist Rubén Rengel is quickly gaining recognition as a remarkably gifted artist. He was the winner of the Robert F. Smith Prize at the Sphinx Competition (2018), winner of the Cleveland Institute of Music Concerto Competition (2014), recipient of the Sallie Shepherd Perkins Prize (2019) and Anna Y. Tringas Award (2013), and winner of the Juan Bautista Plaza National Violin Competition of Venezuela (2011).

Mr. Rengel has appeared as a soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra and the symphonies of Detroit, Houston, New Jersey, Vermont, and Venezuela, among others. An avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with Joseph Silverstein, Pamela Frank, Peter Wiley, David Shifrin, Joel Krosnick, Timothy Eddy, and Gilbert Kalish. He is a former member of the Autana Trio, which was a prizewinner at the 2015 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

In addition to classical music, Mr. Rengel has extensive experience performing Venezuelan folk music and jazz, and has recorded and toured with distinguished Venezuelan ensembles. He also enjoys conducting and performing as a violist.

Community engagement and education are important to Mr. Rengel’s artistry. He has participated in programs with Street Symphony, Sphinx Organization, and Cleveland School of the Arts. He has taught master classes at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Longy School of Music of Bard College, and served as a teaching assistant to Jan Mark Sloman, Patricia McCarty, and Kathryn Lucktenberg at the Meadowmount School of Music. He has attended music festivals that include Music@Menlo, the Perlman Music Program, and Aspen Music Festival and School.

Mr. Rengel is currently a fellow of Ensemble Connect, a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute. He earned a professional studies certificate at the Manhattan School of Music as a student of Mark Steinberg, a master of music degree at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University as a student of Paul Kantor, and a bachelor of music degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music as a student of Jaime Laredo. He was previously educated at the Emil Friedman Conservatory and School in Caracas, where he studied with Iván Pérez Núñez. He is a Kun Shoulder Rest Featured Artist and an alumnus of the New York String Orchestra Seminar.

This December, the New York String Orchestra Seminar—one of the nation’s first and most influential professional training programs—celebrates its 52nd year and the major impact its alumni have had on the music world in the United States and abroad. Renowned for its unique musical philosophy that emphasizes personal expression over a focus on technical mastery and integrates a chamber music approach into orchestral playing, the program was created in 1969 by arts manager Frank Salomon for violinist and conductor Alexander “Sasha” Schneider, who chose Jaime Laredo to succeed him as director in 1993.

This year’s 48 New York String Orchestra members (ages 16–23) come from conservatories and colleges across the country. Selected through a highly competitive audition process, the students gave up their winter holidays to come to New York City for six 12-hour–long days of intensive orchestral rehearsals with Mr. Laredo and chamber music sessions with master artists, including current and former members of the Juilliard, Orion, and Guarneri string quartets. They join an illustrious group of more than 2,400 alumni that include some of the world’s most acclaimed artists.

Seminar alumnus Yo-Yo Ma (1977) called the seminar “one of the defining moments for me as a teenager,” as it was for soloists such as violinists Cho-Liang Lin, Gil Shaham, Shlomo Mintz, and Pamela Frank; conductors who include Peter Oundjian, Douglas Boyd, Keri-Lynn Wilson, Cristian Măcelaru, Karina Canellakis, and Marin Alsop; concertmasters of more than 40 orchestras (including the orchestras of Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia, and the Los Angeles, Berlin, and Czech philharmonics); members of such ensembles as the Emerson, Guarneri, Kronos, Dover, Calidore, and Takács string quartets and Brooklyn Rider; and faculty at leading music schools and conservatories. Each new generation of New York String Orchestra Seminar alumni continues to make a vital contribution to music and illuminate lives around the country. To ensure students are selected on the basis of musical ability and not financial means, there is no tuition charged to those who are invited to participate, and local housing, transportation, and meals are provided throughout the program. For more information on the seminar and its commitment to a tuition-free program, visit newschool.edu/mannes/nysos.

The New York String Orchestra Seminar is a program of The New School’s Mannes School of Music’s (Richard Kessler, Dean) New School Concerts Department. New School Concerts thanks the conductor, coaches, soloist, audition panelists, advisors, the College of Performing Arts’ production and operations team, Glen Kwok, Teng Li, Mary Malin, Kurt Muroki, Peter Sykes, and Carlos Tome of Tarisio Fine Instruments and Bows for their invaluable contributions to the project, and the many others whose time, effort, and resources make the seminar possible. The program is additionally grateful to the late Isaac Stern for launching the program at Carnegie Hall, and to the Hall’s current administration and staff for their caring presentation of the annual concerts.