We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liz Freivogel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Liz, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I first started playing music (violin and viola) when I was very young, so I barely remember the start of the learning process. However, I do remember when I first started playing in a string quartet, which is what I do professionally now. At the beginning, I played in a family quartet with my three siblings. Gradually, as I got older, I branched out to playing with other people, both in my hometown and at music schools and festivals that I attended. I had to learn to be a good collaborator while not losing my own musical personality in the mix. This is a hard balance to find (something I still work on)—how to express your own musical ideas strongly but also to know when to step back and compromise. Over the years, especially the past twenty years that I have spent playing in the Jupiter String Quartet with the same three colleagues, I have shifted the balance of this collaboration many times. We had to spend a few years getting to know each other well, both personally and musically, so the beginning was all about blending in. However, as the years have passed, we are so comfortable with one another that we now have more freedom to be personally expressive within the overall whole, and it is a balance that is more fun for everyone. I am not sure there is a shortcut to finding this balance, and for every group the mix of individuality and communion will be a bit different. Patience is key.
Liz, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I play viola in a string quartet called the Jupiter String Quartet, with three colleagues: Daniel McDonough (cellist, also my brother-in-law), Nelson Lee (violinist), and Meg Freivogel (violinist and my sister). We have been together since 2002, which is unusual in a string quartet; while many groups stay together for a long time, few keep the same membership for so long. We are an ensemble-in-residence at the University of Illinois, where we teach undergraduate and graduate students. We also tour around the country and world playing concerts and teaching. You can read more about us at jupiterquartet.com if you are curious—we are a “classical” quartet but actually play music from many time periods, spanning hundreds of years right up to the present. We often commission new works by living composers in addition to playing the older, more familiar pieces. We are constantly trying to refine both our teaching and playing to make it more effective and emotionally powerful.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Both the most rewarding and frustrating part of being a creative artist is that your work is never finished. The longer I live with this career, the more I realize how little I really know. While this can be unsettling, it is also wonderful—there is always a way to improve and expand upon what I am doing, both in teaching and performing. It is exhausting, but usually in a good way.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I want to share how powerful I find the music that I play, particularly the experience of collaborating so closely with others to create emotions and colors that we communicate to the audience through our music. I want to also teach my own students how to do this most effectively—how to help create that profound connection with the listener and with your fellow musicians.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jupiterquartet.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jupiter_quartet/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jupiterquartet/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@nelsonlee4223
- Other: https://music.illinois.edu/people/profiles/liz-freivogel/
Image Credits
Todd Rosenberg Sarah Gardner