Liz Freivogel

Liz Freivogel is the founding and current violist of the Jupiter String Quartet and is on faculty at the University of Illinois where she has a studio of viola students, helps run the chamber music program, and where the Jupiter Quartet are Artists-in-Residence.

Members of the Jupiter Quartet include her sister, Meg Freivogel, and her brother-in-law, Daniel McDonough, as well as violinist Nelson Lee. The ensemble concertizes and teaches across the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She has enjoyed playing with the quartet at some of the world’s finest halls, including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. In addition, the Jupiters have been enthusiastically received at many major music festivals, including the Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Taos School of Music, Caramoor International Music Festival, Music at Menlo, the Yellow Barn Festival, the Bard Festival, the Skaneateles Festival, the Austin Chamber Music Festival, the Seoul Spring Festival, the Banff Centre, and Madeline Island Music Camp. The quartet has received numerous accolades, including grand prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand prize in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, first prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, membership in the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society’s Chamber Music Two, Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, and an Avery Fischer Career Grant.

Individually, Ms. Freivogel also won prizes in the Primrose International Viola Competition, Oberlin Concerto Competition, American String Teachers Association Competition National Solo Competition, and the Wendell-Irish Viola Competition. Her teaching experience includes a long-term affiliation with the Bowdoin International Music Festival, where she is in residence each summer, as well as repeated teaching and performing residencies at the Madeline Island Music Festival, the Taos School of Music, and the Aspen Music Festival and School. She has engaged in visiting residencies at numerous schools, including Oberlin Conservatory, Adelphi University, the University of Iowa, Middlebury College, Peabody Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, San Francisco Conservatory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and many others. She has served as a judge of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and the Illinois ASTA Concerto Competition and gives frequent masterclasses nationwide.

Both Liz and the Jupiter String Quartet feel that developing relationships with future audiences through engagement work in the community is an essential skill for all musicians. They have performed hundreds of educational concerts for all ages, as well as given numerous masterclasses and lectures to aspiring musicians across the globe. Locally, they have collaborated with the departments of Dance, Theater, Physics, Musicology, Art, Music Theory, Vocal Studies, and the Beckman Institute, as well as with current students.

Liz grew up in a musical family, playing string quartets with her three siblings from a young age. Three of the four siblings are now professional string quartet musicians (the fourth became a physicist). She feels extremely grateful to have benefited from the wisdom of many great music teachers, and hopes to pass on as much of this wisdom as possible to her own students in the years to come.