Jennifer Frautschi, Violin
"The fabulous Frautschi is one of our most fully gifted musical artists, and she filled the long, longing phrases.with dazzling intensity.” — The Boston Herald

Jennifer Frautschi is rapidly gaining acclaim as an adventurous performer with a wide-ranging repertoire. As the Chicago Tribune recently wrote, "the young violinist Jennifer Frautschi is molding a career with smart interpretations of both warhorses and rarities.” Equally at home in the classic repertoire as well as twentieth and twenty-first century works, in the past few seasons alone she has performed the Britten Concerto, Poul Ruders' Concerto No. 1, Steven Mackey’s Violin Sonata, and Mendelssohn’s rarely played d minor Concerto, along with standards such as the Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Berg Concerti. Ms. Frautschi has created a sensation in recent seasons with appearances as soloist with Pierre Boulez and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Christoph Eschenbach and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival, Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, Peter Oundjian and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at opening night of the Caramoor International Festival, the Cincinnati Symphony at Riverbend, and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.

Selected by Carnegie Hall for its Distinctive Debuts series, she made her New York recital debut in April 2004. As part of the European Concert Hall Organization’s Rising Stars series, Ms. Frautschi also made debuts at ten of Europe’s most celebrated concert venues, including London’s Wigmore Hall, Salzburg Mozarteum, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, and La Cité de la Musique in Paris. She has also been heard in recital at the Ravinia Festival, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Washington’s Phillips Collection, Boston’s Gardner Museum, Beijing’s Imperial Garden, Monnaie Opera in Brussels, La Chaux des Fonds in Switzerland, and San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico. Her 2006-07 season highlights include appearances with the Portland, Santa Barbara, Pasadena, Rhode Island, Knoxville, El Paso, and Kansas City Symphonies, and Germany’s Nordwest Deutscher Philharmoniker, in concertos ranging from Sibelius and Brahms to Khatchaturian, Glazunov, and Beethoven’s Triple.

An avid chamber musician, Ms. Frautschi returns this season as chamber artist to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Boston Chamber Music Society, Music @ Menlo, Camerata Pacifica, Moab Music Festival, La Musica in Sarasota in Florida, and the Caramoor International Music Festival, where she has performed annually since André Previn first invited her there as a "Rising Star" in 1992. She has also appeared at such chamber music festivals as Charlottesville (VA), Seattle, Spoleto (Italy), Piccolo Spoleto (South Carolina), Summerfest La Jolla, Santa Fe, Tucson Winter, and St. Barth’s (French West Indies). She has premiered important new works by Oliver Knussen, Krzystof Penderecki, Michael Hersch, and others, and has appeared at New York’s George Crumb Festival and Stefan Wolpe Centenary Concerts. Formerly a member of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two, she is a frequent guest at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Her growing discography includes three widely-praised CDs for Artek: a recent orchestral debut recording of the Prokofiev concerti with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, and highly-acclaimed discs of music of Ravel and Stravinsky, and of 20th century works for solo violin. She has also recorded two discs for Naxos: a Grammy-nominated recording of Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, and a recording of the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, both conducted by the legendary Robert Craft.

Born in Pasadena, California, Ms. Frautschi began the violin at age three. She was a student of Robert Lipsett at the Colburn School for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. She also attended Harvard, the New England Conservatory of Music, and The Juilliard School, where she studied with Robert Mann. She performs on a 1722 Antonio Stradivarius violin known as the "ex-Cadiz," on generous loan to her from a private American foundation.