Carnegie Hall

This December, the New York String Orchestra (NYSO), one of the nation’s first and most influential pre-professional orchestral training programs, celebrates its 55th year and the major impact its alumni have made on the music world in the US and abroad. The NYSO is renowned for its unique musical philosophy, which emphasizes personal expression over a focus on technical mastery, and its approach to orchestral playing from a chamber music perspective. 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 artistic director in 1993.

This year, the 62 New York String Orchestra members, selected through a highly competitive audition process, come from conservatories, universities, and high schools across the country. For the December 28 performance, they are joined by five additional musicians. The students, who met for the first time on December 19, gave up their winter holidays to come to New York City for 10 days of intensive orchestral rehearsals with Maestro Laredo and chamber music sessions with master artists, including current and former members of the Brentano, Emerson, Juilliard, and Orion string quartets.

The 2024 orchestra musicians join an illustrious group of more than 2,500 alumni that includes some of today’s most acclaimed artists. Yo-Yo Ma (NYSO 1977) said the seminar was “one of the defining moments for me as a teenager,” as it was for violinists such as Cho-Liang Lin, Gil Shaham, Shlomo Mintz, and Pamela Frank; conductors who include Karina Canellakis, Peter Oundjian, Douglas Boyd, Christian Măcelaru, and Marin Alsop; past and current concertmasters of more than 40 orchestras (including the Boston and Chicago symphony orchestras, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles and Czech philharmonics, and the Berliner Philharmoniker); members of ensembles that include the Emerson, Guarneri, Kronos, Dover, Calidore, and Takács string quartets and Brooklyn Rider; and faculty at leading music schools and conservatories. They all describe the seminar as a life-changing musical experience that opened new worlds for them.

To ensure that all students chosen to participate in the seminar are judged solely on their musical abilities, the New York String Orchestra Seminar is tuition free and provides free housing and meals to student participants. Supporters of the program have been making this possible since 1969. For more information on the seminar and its founders’ commitment to this policy, please visit nysos.org.

The New York String Orchestra Seminar is a program of The New School’s Mannes School of Music (Richard Kessler, Dean), New School Concerts Department. New School Concerts thanks the conductor, coaches, soloists, audition panelists, advisors, and the College of Performing Arts’ production and operations team for their invaluable contributions to the project and acknowledge Bart Feller, Alan Kay, Richard King, Ray Mase, Frank Morelli, Kurt Muroki, Linda Strommen, Carlos Tome of Tarisio Fine Instruments and Bows, and the many others whose time, effort, and resources make the seminar possible. We are grateful to the late Isaac Stern for bringing our performances to Carnegie Hall, and to the Hall’s current administration and staff for being such caring presenters of the annual concerts.

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

In past seasons, Mr. Laredo has conducted and performed with the Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, St. Louis, and Boston symphony orchestras; San Francisco and Seattle symphonies; Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras; and New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, among many others. Abroad, he has performed with the London and BBC symphony orchestras, English Chamber Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which he led on two American tours and for its Hong Kong Festival debut. His numerous recordings with the SCO include Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and “Italian” and “Scottish” symphonies, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Rossini overtures, and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll.

Dedicated to chamber music, Mr. Laredo toured the world with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio for 45 years, and performed and recorded piano quartet repertoire with Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax for 15 years. His latest ensemble, the piano quartet Espressivo!, premieres Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s Joy Steppin’ in 20 cities from coast to coast.

December 2024 marks the end of Mr. Laredo’s tenure teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Born in Bolivia, he resides in Vermont and Ohio with his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson. He has led the New York String Orchestra since 1993.

Grammy Award–winning violinist Jennifer Koh is recognized for her intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. A forward-thinking artist, she is dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic repertoire while promoting equity and inclusivity in classical music. She has expanded the contemporary violin repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects and has premiered more than 100 works written especially for her. Named Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year, Ms. Koh has won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Concert Artists Guild Competition, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Oberlin College and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir.

In December 2023, Ms. Koh was appointed artistic director of the Kennedy Center’s Fortas Chamber Music Concerts, which partnered with ARCO Collaborative, a nonprofit she founded in 2014 dedicated to illuminating underrepresented voices in music. This season, she performs J. S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin at the Kennedy Center and curates Sounds of US, an immersive new music festival that features world premieres of new chamber works with an emphasis on previously unheard artists in classical music. In addition, she performs other works from her critically acclaimed commissioning projects, including Alone Together, Bach and Beyond, Bridge to Beethoven, Limitless, and Shared Madness.