Jennifer Frautschi, violin

An Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, Frautschi is rapidly achieving 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 classical repertoire as well as twentieth- and twenty-first-century works, in the past few seasons she has performed the Britten Concerto, Poul Ruders's Concerto No. 1, Steven Mackey's Violin Sonata, and Mendelssohn's rarely played Concerto in D Minor, along with standards such as the Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Berg concerti.

Frautschi's 2007-08 season highlights included engagements at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; as soloist with orchestras in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Russia; and with the Madison, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Syracuse Symphonies, and Florida and San Diego Chamber Orchestras. In the summer of 2007 she appeared at Chamber Music Northwest and the Moab, Newport and Rome Chamber Music Festivals as well as the Caramoor International Festival.

An avid chamber musician, Frautschi returns this season as chamber artist to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Boston Chamber Music Society and the Caramoor International Music Festival, where she has performed annually since André Previn first invited her there as a "Rising Star" in 1992. 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 as well as several discs for Naxos, including a Grammy-nominated recording of Schoenberg's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra; and the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, both under the baton of the legendary Robert Craft.

Born in Pasadena, California, Frautschi began studying the violin at age three and 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. 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, Frautschi also made debuts at ten of Europe's most celebrated concert venues. She performs on a 1722 Antonio Stradivarius violin known as the "ex-Cadiz," on generous loan to her from a private American foundation.

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