This December, the New York String Orchestra Seminar, one of the nation’s first and most influential pre-professional training programs, celebrates its 54th year and the major impact its alumni have made on the music world in the US and abroad. The program is renowned for its unique musical philosophy, which emphasizes personal expression over a focus on technical mastery, and its approach to orchestral playing with a chamber-music perspective. The seminar was created in 1969 by arts manager Frank Salomon for the violinist, conductor, and founding member of the Budapest String Quartet, Alexander “Sasha” Schneider, who chose Jaime Laredo to succeed him as artistic director and conductor in 1993.

This year’s 61 New York String Orchestra members, selected through a highly competitive national audition process, come from conservatories, universities, and high schools across the country and around the world. The students, who met for the first time on December 19, gave up their winter holidays to come to New York City for 10 10-hour days of intensive orchestral rehearsals with Mr. Laredo and chamber music sessions with master artists including current and former members of the Emerson, Juilliard, Orion, Dover, and Guarneri string quartets.

This year’s participants join an illustrious group of more than 2,400 program alumni that include some of today’s most acclaimed artists. Yo-Yo Ma (1977) called the seminar “one of the defining moments for me as a teenager,” as it was for violinists such as Cho-Liang Lin, Gil Shaham, Shlomo Mintz, and Pamela Frank; conductors who include Peter Oundjian, Douglas Boyd, Christian Măcelaru, Karina Canellakis, and Marin Alsop; past and current concertmasters of more than 40 orchestras (including the Boston and Chicago symphony orchestras, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles and Czech philharmonics, and the Berliner Philharmoniker); members of ensembles that include the Emerson, Guarneri, Kronos, Dover, Calidore, and Takács string quartets and Brooklyn Rider; and faculty at leading music schools and conservatories. They describe the seminar as a “life-changing musical experience” that opened them to new musical worlds. Each new generation of New York String Orchestra Seminar alumni continues to make a vital contribution to music and illuminates lives around the country.

To ensure that all students chosen to participate in the seminar are judged solely on musical ability and not financial means, the seminar is tuition-free and provides free housing, meals, and local transportation for all students. Supporters of the program have made this possible since 1969. For more information on the seminar and its founders’ commitment to this policy, please visit newschool.edu/mannes/nysos.

The New York String Orchestra Seminar is a program of The New School’s Mannes School of Music (Richard Kessler, Dean), New School Concerts Department. New School Concerts thanks the conductor, coaches, soloists, audition panelists, advisors, and the College of Performing Arts’s production and operations team for their invaluable contributions to the project and acknowledges Choong-Jin Chang, Bart Feller, Alan Kay, Richard King, Diane Lesser, Mary Malin, Raymond Mase, Frank Morelli, Kurt Muroki, Todd Phillips, Linda Strommen, Steven Tenenbom, Raul Vergara, Peter Wiley, and the many others whose time, effort, and resources make the seminar possible. The program is grateful to the late Isaac Stern for bringing its performances to Carnegie Hall, and to the Hall’s current administration and staff for being such caring presenters of the annual concerts.

For more than six decades, Jaime Laredo has excelled as a solo violinist, conductor, recitalist, pedagogue, and chamber musician. Since his orchestral debut with the San Francisco Symphony at the age of 11, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics, and fellow musicians with passionate and polished performances. At age 17, he won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, which launched his rise to international prominence. For 45 years, he toured as a member of the beloved Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. In the 2023–2024 season, Mr. Laredo tours the US as a conductor and soloist at venues including the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, and as a chamber musician with Espressivo!, a new piano quartet in its first full season. This season is Mr. Laredo’s 30th year leading the New York String Orchestra Seminar.

Conducting and performing highlights include engagements with the Chicago, Boston, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras; San Francisco Symphony; Los Angeles and New York philharmonics; The Cleveland Orchestra; and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Acclaimed premieres of double concertos written specifically for Mr. Laredo and his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, are particularly memorable. He has appeared with the London and BBC symphony orchestras, Scottish Chamber Orchestra (with which he made numerous best-selling recordings), and orchestras around the globe.

Mr. Laredo has recorded nearly 100 albums, including a Grammy Award–winning disc of Brahms piano quartets with Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern, and Yo-Yo Ma. His recordings range from collaborations with Glenn Gould, to double concertos with violinist Jennifer Koh and Ms. Robinson, plus award-winning recordings with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. A 23-CD box set on Sony Classical and five episodes of Exploring Music on WFMT celebrate his extraordinary legacy.

Mr. Laredo’s stewardships of the New York String Orchestra Seminar and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis have become beloved educational pillars of the music community. This year is his 12th at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is co–artistic director of Cincinnati’s Linton Chamber Music. He recently completed 20 years as music director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and held the post of artistic director of the Chamber Music at the Y series in New York for 40 years.

Born in Bolivia, Mr. Laredo resides in Guilford, Vermont, and Cleveland, Ohio.

Bulgarian American violinist Bella Hristova has won international acclaim for her “expressive nuance and rich tone” (The New York Times) and “impressive power and control” (The Washington Post). An Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, she has won first prizes in the Michael Hill International Violin Competition and Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and was named laureate of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis.

Ms. Hristova has performed extensively as a soloist with orchestras in the US, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and New Zealand. In addition to her many appearances with orchestras, she has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Following multiple tours of New Zealand with renowned pianist Michael Houstoun, the pair recorded the complete Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin on the Rattle label. The duo will release the Brahms sonatas later this year.

A champion of music by living composers, Ms. Hristova has commissioned composers including Joan Tower and Nokuthula Ngwenyama. In 2015, she was the featured soloist for a consortium of eight major orchestras for a new concerto written for her by her husband, acclaimed composer David Serkin Ludwig.

Ms. Hristova began violin studies at age six in her native Bulgaria. She later studied with Ida Kavafian at the Curtis Institute of Music and received her artist diploma with Jaime Laredo at Indiana University. She is an alum of the 2004 and 2006 New York String Orchestra Seminars. She plays a 1655 Amati violin and lives in New York City with her husband and their four cats.

Praised by Strad magazine as having “lyricism that stood out ... a silky tone and beautiful, supple lines,” Milena Pajaro–van de Stadt has established herself as one of the most sought-after violists of her generation. In addition to solo appearances with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, and Sphinx Virtuosi, she has performed in recitals and chamber-music concerts throughout the US, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, including an acclaimed 2011 debut recital at London’s Wigmore Hall, which was described by 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 to 2022. During her time in the ensemble, the Dover Quartet was the first prize winner and recipient of every special award at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, and won the gold medal and grand prize at the 2010 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Her numerous awards also include first prize in the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and top prizes at the Sphinx Competition and Tokyo International Viola Competition. While in the Dover Quartet, she was on the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music and Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and in residence at the Kennedy Center. She is now a member of the newly formed piano quartet Espressivo! with acclaimed artists Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, and Anna Polonsky.

A violin student of Sergiu Schwartz and Melissa Pierson Barrett, Ms. Pajaro–van de Stadt began studying viola with Michael Klotz at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 2005. She graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Roberto Díaz, Michael Tree, Misha Amory, and Joseph de Pasquale. She then received her master’s degree in string quartet studies with the Dover Quartet at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music as a student of James Dunham. She is an alum of the 2005 and 2008 New York String Orchestra Seminars.