Music Director Stefan Freund

Stefan Freund received a BM in composition and cello with high distinction from the Indiana University School of Music and an MM and DMA in composition and cello from the Eastman School of Music. His primary composition teachers included Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Augusta Read Thomas, Frederick Fox and Don Freund, his father. He studied cello with Steven Doane, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Peter Spurbeck, among others. He is presently Assistant Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the University of Missouri. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music.

Freund is the recipient of two William Schuman Prizes and the Boudleaux Bryant Prize from BMI, five ASCAP Morton Gould Grants, nine ASCAP Plus Awards, a Music Merit Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters, and the Howard Hanson Prize. He was selected as the 2004 Music Teachers National Association-Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year. In 2006 he was awarded the MU Provost's Outstanding Junior Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award. Freund has received commissions from the Carnegie Hall Corporation, the Phoenix Symphony, the New York Youth Symphony, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the McNeese State University Wind Ensemble, the Verdehr Trio, the Louisville String Quartet, the Prism Brass Quintet, the Bowie High School (Austin, TX) Band, the Missouri Music Teachers' Association, and SCI/ASCAP. His music has been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Weill Recital Hall, NPR's St. Paul Sunday Morning, Tivoli Theater (Denmark), Queen's Hall (Denmark), the National Gallery of Art, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the Messiaen Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Active as a performer and producer of new music, Freund is principal cellist of Alarm Will Sound . His cello performances include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, the World Financial Center, the Muzikgebouw (Amsterdam), and Miller Theater. He has recorded on the Nonesuch, Cantaloupe and I Virtuosi labels, as well as Sweetspot Music DVD. Freund has served as the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Columbia Civic Orchestra for four years.