Member Bios

JAIME LAREDO violin
Performing for over six 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 11 with the San Francisco Symphony, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics, and fellow musicians with his 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 the age of 17, Laredo won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, launching his rise to international prominence. In past seasons 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, BBC Symphony, English Chamber Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Royal Philharmonic, and 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); Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Italian,” and “Scottish” symphonies; Beethoven’s Violin Concerto; Rossini overtures; and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. Dedicated to the fine art of chamber music, for forty-five years Mr. Laredo toured the world with the beloved Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, and also performed and recorded the piano quartet repertoire for fifteen years alongside colleagues Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax. His latest chamber group, the piano quartet Espressivo!, will be premiering Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s JOY STEPPIN’ in twenty cities from coast to coast. In January 2025, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music named Mr. Laredo Distinguished Artist in Residence, a position which continues today.

MILENA PÁJARO-VAN DE STADT viola
Praised by Strad magazine as having "lyricism that stood out...a silky tone and beautiful, supple lines," violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt has established herself as one of the most sought-after violists of her generation. In addition to appearances as soloist with the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Jacksonville Symphony, and the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, she has performed in recitals and chamber-music concerts throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, including an acclaimed 2011 debut recital at London’s Wigmore Hall, which was described in Strad as being "fleet and energetic...powerful and focused".
Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt was the founding violist of the Dover Quartet, and played in the group from 2008-2022. During her time in the group, the Dover Quartet was the First Prize-winner and recipient of every special award at the Banff International String Quartet Competition 2013, and winner of the Gold Medal and Grand Prize in the 2010 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Her numerous awards also include First Prize of the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and top prizes at the the Sphinx Competition and the Tokyo International Viola Competition. While in the Dover Quartet, Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt was on the faculty at The Curtis Institute of Music and Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and a part of the Quartet in Residence of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
A violin student of Sergiu Schwartz and Melissa Pierson-Barrett for several years, she began studying viola with Michael Klotz at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 2005. Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Roberto Diaz, Michael Tree, Misha Amory, and Joseph de Pasquale. She then received her Master's Degree in String Quartet with the Dover Quartet at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, as a student of James Dunham.

SHARON ROBINSON cello
Winner of the Avery Fisher Recital Award, the Piatigorsky Memorial Award, the Pro Musicis Award, and a Grammy nominee, cellist Sharon Robinson is recognized as a consummate artist and one of the most outstanding musicians of our time. Whether Ms. Robinson appears as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, or member of the exciting new ESPRESSIVO! Piano Quartet, critics, audiences, and fellow musicians respond to what the Indianapolis Star has called “a cellist who has simply been given the soul of Caruso.” Her guest appearances include the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Symphonies of Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, National, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco. In Europe, she has performed with the London Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, and the English, Scottish, and Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestras.
Sharon Robinson is a devoted chamber musician. With her husband, the violinist Jaime Laredo, she serves as Co-Artistic Director of the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati and the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle. Highly sought after for her dynamic master classes, she brings insight to her teaching from the rare combination of her lifetime experiences as a member of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Ciompi String Quartet of Duke University, and for 45 years the beloved Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, plus as a performer of countless solo recitals and concertos.
Committed to the music of our time, Ms. Robinson has worked closely with many of today’s leading composers including Ned Rorem, Leon Kirchner, Arvo Pärt, Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Stanley Silverman, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Joan Tower, and David Serkin Ludwig. She is admired for her consortium-building, putting together multiple presenters as co-commissioners of both chamber music and concertos with orchestra. Her latest project has gathered nine presenters coast to coast to co-commission “EPIPHANIES,” a string trio by Richard Danielpour, written for Jaime Laredo, Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt, and herself.

ANNA POLONSKY piano
Anna Polonsky is widely in demand as a soloist and chamber musician. Ms. Polonsky has collaborated with the Guarneri, Orion, Juilliard, and Shanghai Quartets, and with such musicians as Mitsuko Uchida, Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Goode, and Emanuel Ax. She has given concerts in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Alice Tully Hall, and Carnegie Hall’s Stern, Weill, and Zankel Halls, and has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. A frequent guest at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she was a member of the Chamber Music Society Two during 2002-2004. She is a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award.
Anna Polonsky made her solo piano debut at the age of seven at the Special Central Music School in Moscow, Russia. She immigrated to the United States in 1990, and attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. She received degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music under the tutelage of Peter Serkin, and from the Juilliard School, studying with Jerome Lowenthal. In addition to performing, she serves on the piano faculty of Vassar College, and in the summer at the Marlboro and Kneisel Hall chamber music festivals.
Together with violinist Jaime Laredo, violist Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Sharon Robinson, Polonsky is a member of the Espressivo! Piano Quartet. With the clarinetist David Shifrin and cellist Peter Wiley, she performs with the Polonsky-Shifrin-Wiley Trio.
This season marks Polonsky's third return to Carnegie Hall's Stern stage as soloist with the New York String Orchestra. 
Ms. Polonsky is a Steinway Artist.