Violist Jessica Thompson is a passionate chamber musician who performs regularly
throughout the United States and abroad as a member of the Daedalus Quartet. Praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” Daedalus has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Abroad, the quartet has appeared in leading venues in Vienna, Cologne, Amsterdam, Paris, Tokyo, and Shanghai. Daedalus has been in residence at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. Among other projects, the quartet performed the complete cycle of Beethoven string quartets at Penn in 2017/18 and recently completed a 2-year exploration of Bartok’s string quartets. The quartet has been recognized for its commitment to new music and has premiered works by composers such as Fred Lerdahl, Vivian Fung, Joan Tower, Richard Wernick, and Anna Weesner. Daedalus has recorded several highly acclaimed discs for Bridge Records.

In addition to her appearances with the Daedalus Quartet, Thompson has performed at
numerous festivals, including Aspen, Taos, Marlboro, the Portland, Charlottesville, Mimir, Halcyon, and Skaneateles Chamber Music Festivals, and Chamber Music Northwest. She has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and performs regularly as a member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, of which she serves as Co-Executive Director.. Thompson has appeared as soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra and in recital in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C. A dedicated educator, she currently teaches at Princeton and Columbia Universities. Thompson is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Karen Tuttle.