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News Release

Last modified: Thursday, June 28, 2007

IU Jacobs School of Music faculty to appear on 'A Prairie Home Companion' Saturday

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 28, 2007

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University Jacobs School of Music faculty Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson will appear in a live edition of Public Radio International's "A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor" on Saturday (June 30).

The live broadcast will be from the Koussevitzy Music Shed at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Mass., on Saturday at 6 p.m. EST.

Laredo and Robinson will perform several movements from "Suite for Two," which violinist Andy Stein wrote for them this year to celebrate 30 years of marriage and 30 years of performing together. Stein is the violinist/saxophonist/arranger listeners usually hear on "A Prairie home Companion."

"Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson, both collectively and individually, are a significant and invaluable force in the international world of music," said Jacobs School of Music Dean Gwyn Richards.

Jaime Laredo

Jaime Laredo, a pupil and friend of the late IU Distinguished Professor Josef Gingold, has performed worldwide for more than 40 years as a soloist, conductor, recitalist and chamber musician.

Laredo, holder of IU's Linda and Jack Gill Chair in Violin, and his wife Robinson -- an acclaimed cellist, winner of the Avery Fisher Recital Award and Grammy nominee -- are members of the celebrated Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, winner of Musical America's "Ensemble of the Year" in 2002.

Local audiences might know Laredo from his association with the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. He has served since 1994 as jury president for the competition, which is held every four years and continues to attract the world's most gifted violinists and distinguished jurors.

Born in Bolivia, Laredo began playing the violin at age 5 and made his orchestral debut at age 11 with the San Francisco Symphony. As a young boy, his education and development were greatly influenced by private coaching with several master musicians, including Gingold, who died in 1995. At age 17, he became the youngest winner of the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, launching his rise to international prominence.

Laredo plays regularly with many of the nation's major orchestras, including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Philadelphia, and at most of the major music festivals. Abroad, he has performed as a soloist or conductor with the London Symphony, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which he led on two American tours and in its Hong Kong Festival Debut.

Additionally, he maintains a busy chamber music schedule as a member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. The trio made its debut in January 1977 at the White House during President Carter's inauguration.

Laredo has amassed nearly 100 recordings, received the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize and earned seven Grammy Award nominations. He won the Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance" in 1971 for Brahms: Piano Quartets (Opp. 25 and 26), which he recorded with frequent chamber music collaborators Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern and Yo-Yo Ma.

He is director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the Brandenberg Ensemble and artistic director of New York's renowned "Chamber Music at the Y" series, which has become an important forum for chamber music performances. Additionally, he has led the annual New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall.

Sharon Robinson

Sharon Robinson gave her first concert when she was 7 and has since received numerous honors and awards. Among them are the Avery Fisher Recital Award, the Pro Musicis Sponsorship Award, the Leventritt Foundation Award and the Gregor Piatigorksy Memorial Award. Her career as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra and member of the renowned Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio has taken her to most major concert halls in the United States and Europe.

Her guest appearances with orchestras in the United States have included the National Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and San Francisco Symphonies. In Europe, she has performed with the London Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra and the English, Scottish and Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestras.

Robinson's television appearances have included "The Tonight Show," "The Today Show," "The Kennedy Center Honors" on CBS and a profile on "CBS Sunday Morning." Her festival engagements have included Spoleto, Mostly Mozart, Aspen, London's South Bank, Madeira, Granada, Edinburgh and Prague's Autumn Festival, where she performed the Dvorak Cello Concerto at the famous Dvorak Hall.

A co-founder of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Sharon Robinson has collaborated with Rudolf Serkin and Alexander Schneider at the Marlboro Music Festival, Leon Fleisher, Rudolf Firkusny, Yo-Yo Ma, Eugene Istomin, Itzhak Perlman, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman and the Emerson, Guarneri, Miami, Juilliard, Orion and Tokyo Quartets. In December 2001, Musical America named the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio the 2002 Ensemble of the Year.

Robinson has recorded numerous chamber and concerto works on labels that include Chandos and Sony labels. Her close relationships with today's composers have led to many commissions for solo and chamber works as well as concerti from Leon Kirchner, Arvo Part, Stanley Silverman, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, David Ott, Katherine Hoover and Richard Danielpour.

Tickets for the show are on sale now and are available online at www.tanglewood.org. To learn more about "A Prairie Home Companion," visit: https://prairiehome.publicradio.org/.

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