About the VSO | Artistic Leadership

Jaime Laredo, Music Director

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 resides in Vermont and Indiana with his wife Sharon Robinson.

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

Composer David Ludwig's music has been performed internationally by leading musicians 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” and the Chicago Tribune says that he “deserves his growing reputation as one of the up-and-comers of his generation.”  He has had performances in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress, and been played on PBS and NPR's Weekend Edition. NPR Music listed him as one of the world’s Top 100 Composers under Forty in 2011.

Ludwig has received commissions from many prominent artists and ensembles. The Grammy Award-winning eighth blackbird ensemble commissioned his work Haiku Catharsis.  In 2005, Ludwig wrote a new work for violinist Jaime Laredo that the composer conducted in a dozen concert halls. 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.

Last season featured performances by Marina Piccinini, eighth blackbird, the American Modern Ensemble, and the Detroit Chamber Winds, as well as the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 The Book of Hours with the Vermont Symphony.  The 2009/2010 season included commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra, Concert Artists Guild, Choral Arts of Philadelphia, the UMichigan Wind Ensemble, as well as a concerto for violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson.  Upcoming commissions include a solo violin piece for Lara St. John, a work for the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, a double concerto for Jennifer Koh and Jaime Laredo, a solo piano work for Jonathan Biss, and a bassoon concert for the Philadelphia Orchestra.
 
Recipient of the First Music Award, an Independence Foundation Fellowship, and a Theodore Presser Foundation Career Grant, Ludwig has also received awards from the American Composers Forum and the American Music Center.  He had a three-year residency with the Vermont Symphony funded by the Meet The Composer “Music Alive!” program.  He was further honored in 2009 as a City Cultural Leader by 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.  He is a resident artist at the Isabella Gardner Museum, and is now the permanent New Music Advisor of the Vermont Symphony.  Ludwig directs several composition programs in prominent summer music festivals, as well.

Born in Bucks County, P.A., Ludwig comes from several generations of musicians.  His grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin and his great-grandfather, violinist Adolf Busch.  He holds degrees from Oberlin, MSM, Curtis, and Juilliard, as well as a Ph.D. from UPenn.  Ludwig is on the composition faculty of the Curtis Institute where he serves as the Artistic Chair of Performance and as the director of the 20/21 Contemporary Music Ensemble.