CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The Jupiter String Quartet will join the University of Illinois School of Music as quartet in residence effective Aug. 16. The Boston-based group, formed in 2001, has won numerous chamber music competitions and performed throughout Asia and Europe, as well as North and South America. They will make their performance debut as U. of I. faculty members at the Allerton Music Barn Festival, in Monticello, Ill., on Aug. 30.
Robert Graves, the dean of College of Fine and Applied Arts, said he knew the Jupiters, as they call themselves, were "an ideal choice" as soon as he met them. "In addition to being superb and passionate musicians, they love teaching and will be full participants in the intellectual and artistic life of the campus and community," Graves said.
Edward Rath, the interim director of the music school, said he was "very pleased" the quartet had accepted the university's offer. "Theirs is an outstanding quartet made up of four excellent players whose musical skills are matched by affable personalities and an infectious enthusiasm for music and life in general," Rath said.
The musicians describe themselves as "a particularly intimate group" - violinists Nelson Lee and Megan Freivogel (who goes by Meg), violist Liz Freivogel, and cellist Daniel McDonough. The Freivogels are sisters (Liz is the older), and McDonough is married to Meg Freivogel. McDonough, Lee and Meg Freivogel met at the Cleveland Institute of Music. When they began searching for a violist, Meg suggested her sister, who was studying at nearby Oberlin College. The quartet completed their schooling together at the New England Conservatory of Music.
"I am confident that the Jupiter String Quartet will bring an increasingly higher level of string playing to our orchestral and chamber music programs as they join with our music faculty in providing excellence in performance studies," Rath said.
The quartet won the 2005 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, the Banff International String Quartet Competition and grand prize in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. They were selected for membership in Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society Two, and recently received an Avery Fisher Career Grant. The group has performed at Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, as well as in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the Seoul National Arts Center and Wigmore Hall in London.
Their 2012-13 concert season includes a collaboration with baritone Thomas Hampson on a world premiere of a work by Mark Adamo, and the premiere of a quartet by award-winning composer Hannah Lash, in conjunction with the Aspen Music Festival and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival.
"It is very exciting for us to have the opportunity to become part of such a vibrant arts community and to contribute to the rich tradition of chamber music in Champaign-Urbana," the musicians wrote in an email to Graves and Rath. "We look forward to our regular performances in the renowned Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and are also proud to have the opportunity to represent the university on other stages around the globe."
The Pacifica Quartet, which had been the quartet in residence at Illinois, now is at Indiana University.