Performing on a 1722 Antonio Stradivarius violin known as the “ex-Cadiz,” on generous loan from a private American foundation, Jennifer Frautschi will join the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra when it kicks off its 26th season at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19, in Valdosta State University’s Whitehead Auditorium. Tickets are on sale now.
 
“I first heard … (Jennifer Frautschi) play on a recording of [Arnold] Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet, a composition in which Schoenberg reworked a [George Frideric] Handel Concerto Grosso and goes into crazy new musical territory,” said Dr. Howard Hsu, VSO music director and conductor. “The solo violinist was handling the fiendish technical demands with ease, and I thought that I definitely wanted to work with that person. That person was Jennifer ….”
 
Frautschi, a two-time Grammy nominee and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, will perform Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47 with the American Prize-winning Valdosta Symphony Orchestra. She is known around the world as an adventurous musician with a remarkably wide-ranging repertoire, from the classic to the contemporary. Born in Pasadena, Calif., she began studying violin at the age of 3 and has trained at the Colburn School for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles, Calif., the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Mass., and The Julliard School in New York City. She currently teaches at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y.  
 
The Valdosta Symphony Orchestra’s season-opening concert, The Distinctive Voice, will also include Charles Ives’s Variations on “America” and Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68, a piece that allowed him to confidently emerge from Ludwig van Beethoven’s “imposing shadow as his true musical heir,” Hsu said.
 
Tickets for Saturday’s performance, which is sponsored by First Federal Savings of Valdosta, are $27 for adults and $10 for students. Senior, military, and VSU faculty and staff discounts are available.
 
Whitehead Auditorium is located on the first floor of VSU’s Fine Arts Building, at the intersection of Brookwood Drive and Oak Street.