Sharon Robinson

Winner of the Avery Fisher Recital Award, Piatigorsky Memorial Award, Pro Musicis Award and a GRAMMY nominee, cellist Sharon Robinson is recognized worldwide 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 with orchestras include the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, National, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and  San Francisco symphonies; and in Europe, the London Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Zürich’s Tonhalle Orchestra and the English, Scottish and Franz Lizst chamber orchestras.

Recipient of the 2012 Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts from the state of Vermont, Robinson divides her time between teaching, solo engagements, performing with her husband, violinist and conductor Jaime Laredo, and is much in demand as a chamber player. She is co-artistic director of the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati and of the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle at Bard College. From 2012 till 2024 she served on the renowned instrumental and chamber music faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. She previously was a full professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and has an Honorary Doctorate from Marlboro College. In 2015, Robinson established the Cleveland Chapter of Music for Food, which raises funds for food assistance for hungry families in NE Ohio. Highly sought after for her dynamic master classes, she brings insight to her teaching from the rare combination of her lifetime experiences as member of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Ciompi String Quartet of Duke University, 45 years with the Kalichstein‐Laredo‐Robinson Trio, plus countless solo recitals and concerto performances.

Committed to the music of our time, Robinson has worked closely with many of today’s leading composers, including Ned Rorem, Leon Kirchner, Arvo Pärt, Stanley Silverman, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Joan Tower, David Ludwig, Katherine Hoover, Richard Danielpour and André Previn. She is admired for consortium building, putting together multiple presenters as co‐commissioners of both chamber music works and concertos with orchestra. She gathered ten presenters to co-commission Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s Elegy for Piano Quartet which was written as a response to the tragic events and social reckoning of 2020. Robinson put together a consortium to commission Shawn Okpebholo’s Wind Quintet, which mourns racial inequity. During the 2024-25 season, ESPRESSIVO! premiered JOY STEPPIN’ by Nokuthula Ngwenyama in twenty concerts coast to coast.

Ms. Robinson and her husband, violinist Jaime Laredo, are Distinguished Artists in Residence at Oberlin Conservatory.