Stefan Freund received a Bachelor of Music with High Distinction from the Indiana University School of Music and a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music. His primary composition teachers included Pulitzer Prize winners Christopher Rouse and Joseph Schwantner as well as Augusta Read Thomas, Frederick Fox, Claude Baker, David Dzubay, and Don Freund, his father. He studied cello with Steven Doane, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Peter Spurbeck, among others. He is presently associate 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, ten ASCAP Plus Awards, a Music Merit Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters, and the Howard Hanson Prize. He has received commissions from the Carnegie Hall Corporation, Phoenix Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Verdehr Trio, Seattle Town Hall, Louisville String Quartet, Prism Brass Quintet and SCI/ASCAP. His music has been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Weill Recital Hall, NPR's St. Paul Sunday Morning, National Gallery of Art, Aspen Music Festival and the Art Institute of Chicago. International performances include the International Performing Arts Center (Moscow), Glinka Hall (St. Petersburg), Queen's Hall (DK), the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre and other concert halls in Austria, Germany and Greece. His works have been recorded on the Innova, Crystal and Centaur labels.  In April of 2016, his work Cyrillic Dreams was performed by the St. Louis Symphony on a subscription series concert in Powell Hall.

Active as a performer and producer of new music, Freund is the founding 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 Hermitage Theatre (RU), the Muzikgebouw (ND), the World Financial Center, and Miller Theatre. 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 and the artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative.