JENNIFER FRAUTSCHI, violin

Noted violinist Jennifer Frautschi returns for her second appearance with the Helena Symphony performing the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Major.  She last appeared to great acclaim with the Helena Symphony in our 2005-2006 Season.  The Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient is rapidly gaining renown 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 20th and 21st Century works, in the past few years alone she has performed the Britten Concerto, Poul Ruder’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.

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, at Wigmore Hall (London) and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival.  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 Organizations’s Rising Stars series, Ms. Frautschi also made debuts at ten of Europe’s most celebrated conccrt venues.  She has 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.

Highlights of the 2007-2008 Season include engagements at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw playing the Beethoven Concerto, as soloist with orchestras in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Russia (Moscow State Symphony), and with the Madison, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Syracuse Symphonies.  She will also appear at the 92nd Street Y, Da Camera of Houston, and New York’s Guggenheim Museum.  Last summer she appeared at Chamber Music Northwest, Moab Music Festival, Newport Music Festival, Rome Chamber Music Festival, and the Caramoor International Festival, where she performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

Recent seasons have featured a return to the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia with Ignat Solzhenitsyn conducting the Schumann Concerto at the Kimmel Performing Arts Center, performances of the Stravinsky Concerto with the Louisville Orchestra, and Bernstein Serenade with the San Diego Symphony.  She made her debut with the Cincinnati Symphony at Riverbend, performed with Andre Watts at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, and and appeared at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. 

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, 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 (Virginia), Music@Menlo (California), Seattle, Spoleto (Italy), Summerfest La Jolla, Santa Fe, 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, an orchestral debut recording of the Prokofiev concerti with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, highly-acclaimed discs of music of Ravel and Stravinsky, and 20th century works for solo violin.  She has also recorded 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 conducted by the legendary Robert Craft; and a forthcoming disc of the Schoenberg Third String Quartet.

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 know as the “ex-Cadiz” on generous loan to her from a private American foundation.