Stefan Freund received a BM in Composition and Cello with High Distinction from the Indiana University School of Music and an MM and a 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 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 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, 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. Recent notable performances include Three Urban Images on the American Vanguard Festival and a performance of dodecaphunphrolic on NPR's St. Paul Sunday Morning by Antares, who released the work on Innova records.

Active as a performer and producer of new music, Freund is the cellist of the new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound and serves on its production board. His cello performances include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, the World Financial Center, and Miller Theater. He has recorded on the Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, and I Virtuosi labels as well as Sweetspot Music DVD. In addition, Freund is the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Columbia Civic Orchestra.