VSO to send music director off with concert at the Flynn; new conductor starts this fall

When Jaime Laredo calls his departure “a passing of the baton,” it sounds like a cliché. But he is in fact passing the baton; the music director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra is about to perform his final concert with the VSO before the next conductor wields the baton in Vermont.

Laredo led the orchestra from 2000 until 2021, when Vermont’s premiere classical-music organization began a two-year search for its next music director by holding auditions at its concerts. The final of seven candidates to perform in Burlington, Andrew Crust, was announced in March as the new music director, a little more than a month after he led the VSO as guest conductor.

Crust’s first concert as music director happens Sept. 30. In the meantime, the VSO is preparing to send Laredo off in grand fashion with a performance Saturday, May 6, at the Flynn titled “A Laredo Salute.” The Burlington Free Press spoke with both men in recent days about what the figurative and literal passing of the baton means to them.

Jaime Laredo: ‘A wonderful relationship’

Laredo doesn’t call Saturday’s event a farewell concert, instead referring to it with the passing-the-baton allusion.

“I was having a great time and I love the orchestra and we had a wonderful relationship. It could have gone on forever as far as I’m concerned,” Laredo said Monday by phone from his southern Vermont home in Guilford. “I think they need some new ideas, new blood, young blood. It’s good for everybody.”

The not-a-farewell concert was supposed to happen in 2021, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic scuttled that plan until now. The time since the pandemic began represents “the strangest years any of us had,” according to Laredo, but provided the chance for a reset for the violinist and his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson.

“Our lives were just insane,” according to Laredo, who with Robinson teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music. (They have a house in Cleveland and spend most of the year there). Pre-pandemic, the two toured frequently as a duo and in a trio with pianist Joseph Kalichstein.

After the pandemic arrived, Laredo and Robinson suddenly found themselves not playing any live shows. They stayed home rather than getting on and off airplanes. Laredo dove into practicing, not to prepare for concerts but simply for the joy of playing.

Kalichstein died in 2022, and Laredo and Robinson decided not to replace him in the trio because he “left a tremendous void,” Laredo said. The couple did form a quartet that includes pianist Anna Polonsky, who has played with the VSO, as well as violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, who until last year performed with the Dover Quartet.

Saturday’s concert at the Flynn will feature Laredo leading works that mean a great deal to him, including the first piece he ever conducted with the VSO, “Lyric for Strings” by George Walker. Violinist Bella Hristova will join the VSO to perform “Saturn Bells,” a composition written by her husband, David Ludwig. Hristova – “absolutely one of my favorite students I ever had,” according to Laredo - and Ludwig, composer-in-residence during Laredo’s VSO tenure, met and married at his Vermont home.

The orchestra will perform Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy,” which will also feature Hristova. “I just adored the way she played that piece” when she studied with him at Indiana University, Laredo said. “I knew that I wanted her to take part in this last concert.”

The performance ends with Brahms’ first symphony. “It just happens to be one of my favorite pieces in the entire world,” Laredo said. “I love Brahms almost more than any other composer.”

Laredo stayed out of the VSO’s selection process for a new music director. He said he isn’t overly familiar with Crust but is excited to see what the next music director brings to the VSO.

“I’m really happy for the orchestra,” Laredo said, “and I’m happy for him that he has such a wonderful group to work with.”

Andrew Crust: ‘A flexible musical machine’

The VSO embarked on a two-year process to audition conductors for the music-director position Laredo was vacating. Of the seven finalists who guest conducted the VSO, Andrew Crust was the last one.

“It’s pretty unusual in any type of job to wait two years,” according to Crust, who used that long stretch to his advantage. “It gave me more time to reflect and learn the repertoire and learn about the orchestra.”

By the time he arrived for his Feb. 4 concert, Crust was more than ready. The VSO liked what it saw at the concert, plus the preceding days that included rehearsals and meetings with donors and other community members. By the end of the month, Crust knew he had the job, signing up for a four-year term.

“Then I didn’t have to wait too long, thankfully,” he said.

Crust spoke with the Free Press by phone from Vancouver, British Columbia, where he served as associate conductor for what he called “the other VSO,” the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Crust is also conductor of the Lima Symphony Orchestra in Ohio.

He studied just over the border from Vermont at McGill University in Montreal from 2010 to 2012 and spent a couple more years after that living in the Canadian metropolis. “I got to come down many times just passing through (Burlington) or going to the airport,” said Crust, who remembers visiting the Church Street Marketplace and dining at Shanty on the Shore.

Crust knows from his guest appearance with the VSO in February that he’ll be conducting an adventurous group of musicians. He credited Laredo, his predecessor, for his work “to help build the orchestra into what it is today, to be such a flexible musical machine.”

The VSO, Crust said, can play any kind of repertoire. The musicians jumped “with hunger” into a new work he conducted by composer Roberto Sierra, he said, and showed an experimental side by delving into what Crust called the often inflexible structure of Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony.

“The musicians are fantastic,” Crust said. “It does feel like a bit of a family even though some people come from outside of Vermont.”

Crust aims to ensure the VSO is not just versatile but diverse. For every traditional piece, Crust wants to bring on works by others – he mentioned Sri Lankan/Canadian composer Dinuk Wijeratne as an example – from a more contemporary, relevant perspective.

“Good music is good music,” according to Crust. “We have to find music not only of a diverse array of composers living and passed on, but we also have to find new styles and new genres and collaborations with people of different cultures.”

Crust has spoken with Matt LaRocca, the VSO’s artistic advisor who oversees programming such as the orchestra’s popular “Jukebox” series of chamber performances in local music clubs. “I love what he’s doing, and it’s one of the appealing things about the job to me,” Crust said. “He’s creating projects where the orchestra can be nimble.”

A more-relaxed setting like a club, Crust said, frees musicians to experiment with avant-garde music in front of smaller groups of passionate listeners. “It’s not only about seeing the orchestra in a concert hall. We have to be out in the community,” according to Crust. “People love to see the musicians up close and personal.”

People won’t see Crust at Laredo’s concert Saturday. “We decided to let it all be about him,” according to Crust. The VSO, however, will announce the schedule for the 2023-2024 season at Saturday’s performance, a schedule that will be Crust’s first as the orchestra’s music director.

If you go

WHAT: “A Laredo Salute” honoring former music director Jaime Laredo

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6

WHERE: The Flynn, Burlington

INFORMATION: $8.35-$54.23. www.vso.org

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont Symphony Orchestra sends Jaime Laredo off with Flynn concert