Jennifer Frautschi
Violin

Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient violinist Jennifer Frautschi is rapidly gaining acclaim as an adventurous performer with a wide-ranging, eclectic repertoire. The Chicago Tribune writes, "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 years 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.

Highlights of the 05-06 season include her return to the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia with Ignat Solzhenitsyn conducting the Schumann Concerto at the Kimmel Performing Arts Center, and performances of the Stravinsky Concerto with the Louisville Orchestra and Bernstein Serenade with the San Diego Symphony. In the summer of 2005, she made her debut with the Cincinnati Symphony at Riverbend, performed with Andre Watts at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, and appeared at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and Caramoor.

Ms. Frautschi's recent seasons have included performances with Pierre Boulez and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, and Christoph Eschenbach and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. She has also performed during opening nights at the Caramoor International Festival, with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, with the Mostly Mozart 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 made debuts at ten of Europe's most celebrated concert venues, including London's Wigmore Hall, Salzburg Mozarteum, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, and La Cit 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.

Formerly a member of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two, Ms. Frautschi returns this season as chamber artist to the Chamber Music Society, Miller Theater and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival in Virginia, La Musica in Sarasota, (Florida), and the Caramoor International Music Festival, where she has performed annually since Andr Previn first invited her there as a "Rising Star" in 1992. She has also appeared at such chamber music festivals as Seattle, Moab (Utah), 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.

Her growing discography includes three widely praised CDs for Artek -- her debut in works by Stravinsky and Ravel, a 20th century recital of solo works by Ysae, Bartok, Davidovsky, and Harbison, and her first orchestral album featuring both Prokofiev concerti with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony. She can also be heard on the recent release of Schoenberg's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra and works of Webern conducted by the legendary Robert Craft on the Naxos label.

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 and the University of Southern California School of Music. 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.