Rachel Henderson Freivogel is the founding and current cellist of the 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. Ms. Freivogel is a recipient of 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. Ms. Freivogel 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.

Ms. Freivogel’s discography with the Jasper 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. Ms. Freivogel is a founder and Co-Artistic Director of Jasper Chamber Concerts, a chamber music series based in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania and Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of the Carolinas.

Ms. Freivogel is a member of the chamber music and cello faculty at Temple University’s Center for Gifted Young Musicians, a visiting artist at Swarthmore College, and teaches privately in the Philadelphia area.

Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ms. Freivogel began cello studies at the age of four with her mother, Deborah Watts. Ms. Freivogel earned 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. She went on to earn a Master of Music degree in String Quartet Performance from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music where she studied with Norman Fischer and an Artist Diploma from Yale School of Music, where she studied with Clive Greensmith.