About the VSO | Artistic Leadership

Jaime Laredo, Music Director

Approaching his 50th year before audiences across the globe, Jaime Laredo excels 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 Stern; and last night it was Jaime Laredo.” His education and development were greatly influenced by private coaching with eminent masters 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.

The 2008/09 season includes several conducting engagements, including appearances with the  Fort Wayne Philharmonic, where he is the Artistic Advisor, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, in addition to his Music Directorship with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra.  Laredo continues to collaborate with his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, as part of an ambitious project to premiere and record newly commissioned double concertos across the U.S.  The Duo opened their season with Miklos Rozsa’s Sinfonia Concertante with the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, and performed the world premiere of David Ludwig’s Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra under the baton of guest conductor Sarah Hicks.  As a special celebration of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s 70th birthday, the Duo will perform her Double Concerto, which was written especially for them, with the Detroit Symphony under the baton of Hans Graf.

Highlights of the celebrated Duo’s past seasons have included the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall of In the Arms of the Beloved, Richard Danielpour’s 2002 Concerto for Violin and Cello written for the Duo to celebrate 25 years of marriage.  The April 2005 performance in New York as well as a subsequent performance in Philadelphia were led by Michael Stern, who conducted the world premiere and the recently released recording. To commemorate the Duo’s 30th anniversary two years ago, Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson commissioned a new work from composer Andy Stein as well as a new double concerto from Richard Danielpour.  In addition, Naxos released the Double Concerto by Ned Rorem, also written for Laredo-Robinson, with the Iris Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Michael Stern.

In 2007/08, Laredo conducted the Seattle Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Alabama Symphony, and the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.  The Laredo-Robinson Duo premiered Daron Hagen’s Double Concerto; as a chamber musician, Laredo presented multiple chamber music concerts at the 92nd Street Y in New York (where he’s also the Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Series), including a special Beethoven Trio marathon with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio.  Other chamber music engagements throughout the season included concerts in Massachusetts, Arizona, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C. (Kennedy Center), Detroit, Miami, Indianapolis, Albuquerque, and back to 92nd Street Y for the New York premiere of Richard Danielpour’s piano quartet Book of Hours--a special commission for the Trio’s 30th anniversary.

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio celebrated its 30th anniversary with major concerts at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the 92nd Street Y in New York, and appearances in  Boston, Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Tucson, La Jolla, El Paso, Lisbon, Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Calgary.  They commissioned Richard Danielpour for a new Piano Quartet, performed in ten cities nationwide in 2006/07 and 2007/08.  On the recording front, KOCH International Classics released the Trio’s new recording of Arensky and Tchaikovsky trios, as well as re-releases from their vast existing discography. Their most recent project includes a four-disc Brahms Cycle of the complete trios.

In 2005 Laredo and Robinson both accepted chaired positions at the Indiana University School of Music.  During that same year, Laredo balanced solo and conducting dates with the intense chamber music schedule of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Winner of Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year 2002.

Laredo is in demand worldwide as a conductor and a soloist.  He has been Music Director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra since 1999 and is also the Artistic Director of the Brandenburg Ensemble.  In past seasons Laredo’s guest engagements included a return to the Los Angeles Philharmonic as conductor and soloist, and performances with 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, Laredo has performed as soloist and conductor 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 its 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.

Laredo has recorded close to one hundred discs. He has received the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize and has been awarded seven Grammy nominations. He won the Grammy Award for a disc of Brahms Piano Quartets which he performed with his close colleagues and frequent chamber music collaborators, renowned pianist Emanuel Ax, celebrated violinist Isaac Stern, and distinguished cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Laredo’s discs on CBS and RCA have included the complete Bach Sonatas with the late Glenn Gould and a KOCH International Classics album of duos with 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 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, KOCH released the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio’s two-CD set of the chamber works of Maurice Ravel, to follow the complete trios and sonatas of Shostakovich.

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 the festivals in Italy, Spain, Finland, Greece, Israel, Austria, Switzerland and England.

Born in Bolivia, Laredo holds the status of national hero in that country, with a stadium named for him in La Paz and a commemorative set of postage stamps issued in his name.  Jaime Laredo and his wife reside in Vermont and Indiana.

Anthony Princiotti, Principal Guest Conductor

Anthony Princiotti, Principal Guest Conductor of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, also serves as Music Director and Conductor of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra.  In addition he is Music Director and Conductor of the New Hampshire Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1993 to 1996, he was Director of Instrumental Music and Conductor at Amherst College.
 
As a guest conductor, Princiotti has appeared with the Vermont Symphony, the Hartford Symphony, the Sao Paolo State Symphony and the New England String Ensemble.

Mr. Princiotti began his musical training at the age of four, studying violin with his father.  He received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1980 from the Juilliard School, where he studied violin with Oscar Shumsky and viola with William Lincer.  As a graduate student at Juilliard, he studied conducting with Sixten Ehrling and Alfred Wallenstein.  In 1987, Princiotti was the recipient of a conducting fellowship at Tanglewood where he studied with Leonard Bernstein, Gustav Meier and Seiji Ozawa.  Princiotti received his Master of Musical Arts degree from the Yale School of Music in 1991, and received his doctorate in 1999.  At Yale, his principal teachers were Eleazar de Carvalho and Günther Herbig. He was also a recipient of the Marshall Bartholomew Scholarship, the Charles Ives Scholarship, and the Yale School of Music Alumni Association Prize.

Between 1981 and 1987, Mr. Princiotti was first violinist with the Apple Hill Chamber Players, a New Hampshire-based ensemble that specialized in the chamber music repertoire for piano and strings.  As a member of Apple Hill, he performed 70-80 concerts annually throughout the United States and taught every summer at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music.  During this time, he also served as the music director and conductor of the Brandeis University Orchestra.  His recording of Telemann's Twelve Fantasias for Unaccompanied Violin was recently released.  His other interests include running, hiking, tai-chi, and motorcycles. He currently resides in Walpole, New Hampshire.

Robert De Cormier, Chorus Director

Since its debut in May 1994, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus has won unqualified praise from audiences and critics alike.  The mastermind behind the success of the VSO Chorus is noted choral conductor and arranger Robert De Cormier.  Mr. De Cormier helped to found the VSO Chorus in 1993, and remains the director. 

While Mr. De Cormier has been a Vermont resident for over 30 years, his reputation is known beyond the state.  He acted as music director of the New York Choral Society for 17 years.  Under his leadership the group became renowned for its high standard of excellence in choral singing and unique programming.

A graduate of Juilliard School of Music, Mr. De Cormier’s other conducting engagements have taken him from Broadway and opera to numerous concert tours throughout the U.S. and Canada with his own professional group the Robert De Cormier Singers.  He spent many years as conductor and arranger for Harry Belafonte and has been music director for the popular folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary for the past 20 years.

He has written several works ranging from choral to ballet to Broadway scores.  His cantata, The Jolly Beggars, based on the poetry of Robert Burns, premiered in New York to critical acclaim.  His ballet score, Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder, is in the active repertoire of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.  His choral works Legacy, Four Sonnets to Orpheus, Shout for Joy, and Under a Greenwood Tree, were premiered at Carnegie Hall by the New York Choral Society.

His television credits include a three-part series of Choral Folk Songs for the BBC and an Emmy award-winning special with Harry Belafonte.  For PBS, Mr. De Cormier was the choral director of a special starring Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle, conducted by James Levine, as well as “Christmas at Carnegie” with Kathleen Battle and Frederica Von Stade, conducted by Andre Previn.

He has served on the New York State Council on the Arts and been a member of the Choral Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts.  In 2000 Mr. De Cormier established Counterpoint, a nine-member vocal ensemble made up of VSO Chorus members.  In 2002, he was honored by the New York Choral Society at a concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall, and was presented the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts by the Vermont Arts Council, in recognition of his 80th birthday.

David Ludwig, New Music Advisor

David Ludwig has recently finished a three-year position as Composer-in-Residence with the VSO, under the auspices of Music Alive!, a residency program of the League of American Orchestras and Meet The Composer. He serves as the VSO's permanent New Music Advisor.

David Ludwig's music has been performed internationally by leading musicians of our time in some of the world's most prestigious locations. His music has been called “entrancing,” and that it “promises to speak for the sorrows of this generation,” (Philadelphia Inquirer). It has further gained recognition for its “expressive directness” (The New York Times) and has been noted for “a yearning, poetic quality” (Baltimore Sun). The New Yorker magazine calls him a “musical up-and-comer.” He has had performances in such venues in as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress, and been played on PBS and NPR's Weekend Edition.

Ludwig has received commissions from many prominent artists and ensembles. The Grammy Award-winning eighth blackbird ensemble premiered his new work Haiku Catharsis at the Kimmel Center in 2004. In 2005, Ludwig wrote a new work for violinist Jaime Laredo that he conducted in a dozen concert halls around Vermont. According to the League of American Orchestras, his Concertino was one of the top ten most frequently performed orchestra works by a living composer that year. He joined the Curtis On Tour Ensemble in 2009 for a tour with his song-cycle From the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayám in a season that also featured performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, the National Symphony, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Other commissions have been received from important musicians like Jonathan Biss, Jeffrey Khaner, Soovin Kim, Michael Tree, and Jason Vieaux. The past season featured commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra, Concert Artists Guild, the University of Michigan Wind Ensemble, and a double concerto for violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson that was premiered in January of 2009 by the VSO.

Recipient of the First Music Award, an Independence Foundation Fellowship, and a Theodore Presser Foundation Career Grant, Ludwig has been twice nominated for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Stoeger Award.  

This year he won the 2009 award as a Philadelphia Cultural Leader in Choral Music from the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia.

Ludwig was the Young Composer in residence at the Marlboro Music School for three consecutive years. In addition to Marlboro, he has been in residence at the Yaddo and MacDowell artist colonies and the Isabella Gardner Museum. He is further the director of the contemporary music programs at The New York Summer Music Festival, the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, and the Rocky Ridge Music Festival in Colorado.

Born in Bucks County, P.A., Ludwig received a B.M. from the Oberlin Conservatory studying with Richard Hoffmann and his M.M. from The Manhattan School of Music. He continued post-graduate work at The Curtis Institute with Richard Danielpour, Jennifer Higdon and Ned Rorem, and at the Juilliard School with John Corigliano. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania where he was the George Crumb Fellow. Ludwig joined the faculty of Curtis in 2002 where he serves on the composition faculty, as the acting chair of musical studies, and as the artistic director of the 20/21 Contemporary Music Ensemble.