Jaime Laredo, music director and conductor of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, is among the two hundred and twenty-nine leaders in the sciences, the humanities and the arts, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector who have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The new Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members announced this week join one of the world’s most prestigious honorary societies. The Academy, a center for independent policy research,celebrates the 230th anniversary of its founding this year.
The VSO recently announced that Laredo, a resident of Guilford, has extended his agreement as music director of the Orchestra though the 2011-2012 season. Jaime Laredo is known as one of the greatest violinists and chamber musicians in the world. Over the years, he has drawn world-renowned guest soloists to perform in Vermont, including Andrea Watts, Leon Fleisher, Lang Lang, and Peter Serkin. Laredo and his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, have celebrated more than 30 years with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. He is also a highly respected conductor and teacher and serves on the faculty of the Indiana University School of Music. Laredo has led Vermont’s professional orchestra as musical director since 2000.
The American Academy, established in 1780, undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Its membership of scholars and practitioners from many disciplines and professions gives it a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary, long-term policy research. Current projects focus on science and technology; global security; social policy and American institutions; the humanities and culture; and education.
Since its founding by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholars and founders of the nation, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers†from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Laredo is joined this year in the arts and humanities area by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel Howe; former New York City Ballet principal dancer and founder of her own ballet company at the Kennedy Center Suzanne Farrell; actors John Lithgow and Denzel Washington; director Francis Ford Coppola; jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins; and baritone Thomas Hampson.
The men and women we elect today are true pathbreakers who have made unique contributions to their fields, and to the world, said Academy Chair Louis W. Cabot. The Academy honors them and their work, and they, in turn, honor us. The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 9, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.