SARATOGA SPRINGS — Jill Levy, the concertmistress for the Albany Symphony Orchestra, doesn’t usually look forward to guest conductors. But because music director David Alan Miller was off in Boston conducting the New England Conservatory Orchestra, Miller asked Jaime Laredo to fill in for three concerts that begin this Thursday at the Canfield Casino.

“It’s wonderful,” Levy said with a happy sigh.

For almost 35 years, Laredo has been the violinist in the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, which includes his cellist wife, Sharon Robinson, and pianist Joseph Kalichstein. Until 2005, Laredo was also a faculty member of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, which is where Levy met him when she was 15.

“I studied with him one summer,” she said. “He was such an inspirational force and such a sweet person and magnificent player.”

Their paths didn’t cross again until Laredo and Robinson played Ned Rorem’s Double Concerto in 2003 with the ASO. But Levy had never played under Laredo the conductor, which makes this week’s concerts all the more exciting, she said.

Besides conducting John Corigliano’s “Voyage” and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C (“Jupiter”), Laredo will conduct and solo in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G and, best of all, he and Levy will play Bach’s Double Concerto for Two Violins.

“It’s so nice to have that long, long ago connection,” Levy said.

Early experience

Laredo is no stranger to conducting, which he said he first tried when he was about 13 years old.

“I never took lessons but I played with some of the greatest conductors and learned from them,” he said. “Actually, the bad conductors taught me more.”

But conducting on a semi-regular basis had to wait a few years while he established himself as a violinist. Laredo debuted at 11 with the San Francisco Symphony with such stunning success that critics compared him to Yehudi Menuhin or Isaac Stern. At 17, he won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, which launched his international career. Over the years, his more than 100 recordings have won several awards, including the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize, a 1992 Grammy Award and seven Grammy nominations.

Always a chamber music devotee, Laredo also became one of the great organizers. About 35 years ago, he took over the chamber music series at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, which today is considered one of the great classical music series, and it is where the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio often performs.

More than 20 years ago, he took over for founder Alexander Schneider at the annual New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall, which is now in its 40th year. The 10-day session is for young musicians aged 15 to 22, who train in orchestral and chamber music repertoire and then give two concerts at the hall and a special Christmas concert that has become a tradition. Some of the artists who have played solos with the orchestra are pianists Andre Watts, Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman.

Sixteen years ago, Laredo took over for Josef Gingold, who had started the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis in 1982. Now considered one of the best violin competitions in the world, Indianapolis has become a second home for Laredo, who in 2005 joined the faculty at Indiana University’s School of Music.

Along the way with all these various responsibilities, Laredo began to add conducting.

“I started out doing the classics and I had fantasies about doing Beethoven’s symphonies,” he said. “I never thought of doing Mahler and Strauss — the huge orchestral pieces. I’m fortunate to have now done it all.”

He’s always preferred to be a guest conductor of such orchestras as those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Baltimore to having the job of a music director, he said. A guest conductor has none of the obligations of fundraising and dealing with the sponsors and the boards.

“For a music director, that’s 100 percent of your time. You can’t imagine doing anything else. I’m not happy with that,” Laredo said.

He changed his mind, though, when the head of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra came calling. He first came to Vermont in the 1960s for the Marlboro Music Festival, which is where he met Robinson. They soon married and he was pleasantly surprised to discover that she, too, fantasized about living in Vermont, he said. In 1985, they bought a house and moved there. As a state resident, he often played solos with the VSO but when the orchestra’s music director left in 1998, the orchestra was floundering.

Taking reins

“Their CEO consulted with me and we were talking about who to get when he offered me the job,” Laredo said. “I loved Vermont, and this way I could be doing something for the state I loved.”

Although the orchestra does only about five concerts a year and a two-week summer series, the added duties haven’t caused any major conflicts with a schedule that doesn’t allow Laredo much free time.

“I try to balance out what I do,” he said. “But Sharon and I don’t go to the movies any more.”

The ASO concert is a special one. With Miller’s agreement on repertoire, Laredo chose his favorite Mozart concerto; the Corigliano is a piece he always wanted to do; and the Bach is just so he can work with Levy.

“I haven’t played with Jill since she studied with me, and I’m really looking forward to it,” he said.