 RUTH
LAREDO BIOGRAPHY
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Hailed
as "America's First Lady of the Piano" (N.Y. Daily News), Ruth
Laredo has a distinguished worldwide reputation as a leading
soloist, recitalist and recording artist. While she is
particularly renowned for her pioneering recordings of the complete
solo piano music of Rachmaninoff and the complete piano sonatas of
Scriabin, her broad repertoire ranges from Beethoven to Barber.
For the
past 16 seasons, she has created a large and enthusiastic following
for her sold-out series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York City, "Concerts with Commentary." She has won high praise for
her masterful playing and discussions of Brahms, Mendelssohn, Robert
and Clara Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Ravel, Tchaikovsky,
Dvorak, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Her most recent series is on
the music of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Shostakovich, in a
three-concert series titled "The Russian Spirit" with special guests
Courtenay Budd, soprano and the St. Petersburg String Quartet.
Her
Video, "Live from the Metropolitan Museum", celebrates her unique
Rachmaninoff performances. Her latest recording is a 2-CD set of the
complete Brahms Piano Quartets with the Shanghai Quartet, recorded
on the Arabesque Label. Her recent CD, recorded on an authentic 1893
Bechstein Piano from the Metropolitan Museum's instrument collection
is entitled "Such Good Friends", and highlights the personal
relationships between Brahms, Mendelssohn, and the Schumanns.
Ruth
Laredo appeared in the Woody Allen film, "Small Time Crooks", which
stars Hugh Grant. In the scene, Hugh Grant tries to impress
Tracy Ullman by taking her to an important N.Y. Concert, a piano
recital in which Ruth Laredo plays music of Rachmaninoff.
Noted for
her strong commitment to chamber music, Ms. Laredo frequently
collaborates with the Tokyo String Quartet, and was a founding
member of the Music from Marlboro concerts. She has appeared
with the Guarneri Quartet and the Tokyo Quartet in Lincoln Center's
Great Performers series, as well as with the Vermeer, Shanghai,
Emerson, Muir and St. Lawrence Quartets.
In 1996,
she teamed up with jazz greats Marian McPartland and Dick Hyman for
a wonderfully inventive evening called "Three Piano Classical / Jazz
Crossover" which made its debut at the 92nd St. Y's famed "Jazz in
July" series. This combination has become a consistent hit
around the country ever since that night.
A three-time Grammy
award nominee, Ruth Laredo has been widely praised for her
recordings. She was the first pianist ever to record
Rachmaninoff's complete solo works for CBS Masterworks, which earned
her a "Best Keyboard Artist" award from Record World magazine, and a
Grammy nomination. These ground-breaking recordings have been
re-issued on five CD's by SONY Classical. Her historic
Scriabin recordings - the first of the complete sonatas, have been
re-issued on two CD's by Nonesuch. She recently recorded
Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" and Rachmaninoff's Suite No. 2 for Two
Pianos with her colleague, James Tocco, on the Gasparo label.
Her all-Barber recording on Nonesuch earned her another Grammy
nomination. This season, she recorded Ned Rorem's "Day Music"
suite with violinist Philip Setzer for Newport Classics.
She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center,
the Library of Congress and the White House, and with such
prestigious orchestras as the N.Y. Philharmonic, Philadelphia
Orchestra, Boston Symphony, and the Detroit Symphony. She has
played with the leading chamber orchestras, including the St. Paul
Chamber Orchestra, Orpheus, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's.
Ms. Laredo made a highly successful tour of the U.S. as
soloist with the Warsaw Philharmonic, culminating in a performance
of the Rachmaninoff 1st Concerto at Carnegie Hall. Prior to
the tour, she appeared with the orchestra in Warsaw for a United
Nations Day concert which was televised throughout Europe.
Her
extensive tour of Russia and Ukraine, highlighted by concerts in
Moscow, St. Petersburg and Odessa, formed part of an extraordinary
television profile about her on "CBS Sunday Morning".
In demand
as an eloquent and authoritative commentator on the arts and piano
literature, she has been a regular columnist for Piano Today
magazine, a frequent guest critic on WQXR's long-running "First
Hearing", and a Special Arts Correspondent for National Public
Radio's "Morning Edition", and she has hosted "Onstage with Young
Concert Artists" on WQXR for the past three years.
Ruth
Laredo's life and career have made her a role model for women in the
arts. Nominated for the "Woman of the Year" award by Ladies
Home Journal, she was a guest speaker at the Harvard/Radcliffe
Women's Leadership Conference
at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was recently
chosen to give the Commencement Day Address at Rutgers University's
Mason Gross School of the Arts.
"The Ruth Laredo Becoming A Musician Book", a guide for
aspiring pianists drawn from Ms. Laredo's own experiences is
available in bookstores around the country. (Publisher: European
American Music Corporation). Her work as editor of the
complete Rachmaninoff Preludes for Piano, published by C.F. Peters
International, is available worldwide.
Born in Detroit, and a longtime resident of New York City, Ruth
Laredo studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Rudolf Serkin,
made her N.Y. Philharmonic debut with Pierre Boulez, and her
Carnegie Hall orchestral debut with
Leopold Stokowski and the American Symphony. Her
N.Y. Recital debut was presented by Young
Concert Artists.
She is
the proud mother of Jennifer Laredo, who is married and lives with
her husband, the cellist Paul Watkins, in London, England. |
In
association with Pam Parsons Agency
Featured
in Woody Allen's 
