The Jasper String Quartet

The Jasper String Quartet (J Freivogel and Sae Chonabayashi, violins, Sam Quintal, viola, and Rachel Henderson Freivogel, cello; New Haven, CT) has performed throughout the United States and in Canada, England, Italy, Japan, Korea, and Norway. Dedicated to educational work of all types, they have brought over 100 outreach programs into schools. In their Melba and Orville Roleffson Residency at the Banff Centre they embarked on “guerilla chamber music”, performing concerts in unusual settings around Alberta, Canada. More recently, they have worked closely with Caramoor and with Astral Artists to bring outreach activities to schools during their two-year Ernst C. Stiefel Quartet Residency at the Caramoor Center for the Music and the Arts. The quartet is the winner of the 2012 Cleveland Quartet Award, the Grand Prize and the Audience Prize in the 2008 Plowman Chamber Music Competition, Grand Prize at the 2008 Coleman Competition, First Prize at Chamber Music Yellow Springs 2008, and the Silver Medal at the 2008 and 2009 Fischoff Chamber Music Competitions. They were the first ensemble to win the Yale School of Music’s Horatio Parker Memorial Prize in 2009. Originally formed at Oberlin Conservatory, the Jasper Quartet began pursuing a professional career in 2006 when they studied with James Dunham, Norman Fischer, and Kenneth Goldsmith as Rice University’s Graduate Quartet-in-Residence. The quartet continued its training with the Tokyo String Quartet as Yale University's Graduate Quartet-in-Residence. Currently, they hold ensemble-in-residence positions at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Classic Chamber Concerts in Naples, Florida. The Jasper Quartet records with Sono Luminus and, in the past year, released two albums pairing Aaron Jay Kernis’s Quartets with Schubert and Beethoven. Their name is inspired by Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada.