Rachel Henderson Freivogel
Rachel Henderson Freivovel
Rachel Henderson Freivogel is the founding and current cellist of the acclaimed Jasper String Quartet. Since the group’s inception in 2003, she has performed, recorded, and taught extensively, shaping the quartet’s distinctive voice and earning numerous accolades along the way. Honors include the 2024 CMA Album of the Year Award, the 2012 Cleveland Quartet Award, the 2016 Fischoff Educator Award, and top prizes at the Fischoff, Plowman, Yellow Springs, and Coleman Chamber Music Competitions.
She is also a core member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO), an ensemble of leading chamber musicians committed to collective music-making at the highest level.
Her discography with the Jasper String Quartet spans a wide range of composers, including Caroline Shaw, Vivian Fung, Judd Greenstein, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Annie Gosfield, Aaron Jay Kernis, Donnacha Dennehy, as well as canonical works by Beethoven, Debussy and Schubert. She is a founder and Co-Artistic Director of Jasper Chamber Concerts, a chamber music series based in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania.
A passionate educator, Ms. Freivogel is on the faculty of Temple University’s Center for Gifted Young Musicians and maintains a full private teaching studio. She serves as an Affiliate Artist at Haverford College and a visiting artist at Swarthmore College. In the summer, she co-directs the Saint Paul Chamber Music Institute and serves as Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of the Carolinas.
Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ms. Freivogel began cello studies at the age of four with her mother, Deborah Watts. She holds degrees in Cello Performance, Viola da Gamba, and Baroque Cello from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Darrett Adkins and Catharina Meints, and advanced degrees in String Quartet Performance from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and the Yale School of Music, under the mentorship of Norman Fischer and Clive Greensmith.
She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, violinist J Freivogel—also of the Jasper String Quartet—and their two children.