Meet Ives Quartet Artists

After earning degrees in Music and Biology at Stanford University as a Ford scholar, Susan Freier decided to pursue an advanced degree at the Eastman School of Music. In her first year there she was asked to join three friends to form the Chester String Quartet and enter the Cleveland Quartet competition. The Chester won, working intensively with the Cleveland Quartet at Eastman and the Aspen School of Music, and went on to win the Evian, Munich International, Portsmouth (England) and Chicago Discovery competitions.

Immediately after leaving Eastman, the Chester became faculty ensemble-in-residence at Indiana University at South Bend. In 1989 Susan returned to her native Bay Area to join the Stanford University faculty and the Stanford String Quartet. She has been a participant at the Aspen, Grand Teton and Newport Music Festivals, and has performed on NPR, the BBC and German State Radio. Her recordings are on the Newport Classics, Stolat, Pantheon, Laurel, Music and Arts, and CRI labels. Formerly an artist-faculty member at the Pacific Music Festival, Music in the Mountains at Steamboat Springs and the Rocky Ridge Music Center, she now teaches and performs at the Orfeo Music Festival (Italy) and the San Diego Chamber Music Workshop.

“I was born in Brooklyn, New York and moved to Palo Alto when I was six. I started the violin when I was ten and played in the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra through high school. It was my entire social and emotional outlet. I went on to Stanford as a double major: biology and music. I was thinking of going to medical school and that was certainly my parents’ plan for me. But music really took over.

“Playing in a quartet is difficult but it’s never boring. I like the interaction, getting to know the people in the group and being on my toes and listening to feedback from the other members. You have to be flexible - sometimes against your will. But nothing else feels as satisfying to me. When you’re playing in a quartet you are always trying to play your best. You can’t just sit back, not even for one moment.

“Unfortunately most people don’t know very much about chamber music so education is also a big part of what we do. Recently, we did a residency at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. There was a sort of generic Beethoven class for both music majors and non-majors and they were required to come to our concert. We met with them before the performance and asked the students for a show of hands to see who had been to a string quartet concert before, and there were none. After performing we met with them again and they all responded that they might well go to another concert on their own, not solely as a class requirement. I think they really got something from the experience and the next day when we walked through campus there were kids yelling out their dorm windows, ‘Hey, cool Beethoven!’

“Both Stephen and I are in the San Francisco Contemporary Players, and the chance to work with living composers is something we cherish. I adore spending time with our three children. I make an effort to be outdoors as much as possible and would love to be a gardener, but I keep planting things and they die. So I go to nurseries and window shop.”

Meet Susan Freier