About
Residency Dates
  • March 2008 – March 2008
Region
USA

Joan
Jeanrenaud, cellist and composer, grew up in a small town outside
Memphis, Tennessee where she began studying the cello under Peter
Spurbeck at age eleven.  Her commitment to music deepened during
her work with Fritz Magg at Indiana University where she obtained a
Bachelor of Music degree and her subsequent private studies with
Pierre Fournier in Geneva, Switzerland.

In
1978 Jeanrenaud joined the Kronos Quartet, a position she held for
twenty years.  For two decades she worked with hundreds of
composers and musicians including John Cage, Frank Zappa, Morton
Feldman, Philip Glass, Witold Lutoslawski, Joan Armatrading, Steve
Reich, Pauline Oliveros, Astor Piazzolla, Sofia Gubadulina, Foday
Muso Suso, David Byrne, Terry Riley, John Zorn and many others. 
She performed more than 2,000 concerts throughout the world and made
over thirty recordings with Kronos, most of which were released on
Nonesuch Records.

Upon
leaving Kronos in 1999 she began her pursuit of solo and
collaborative projects in composition, improvisation, electronics,
video and multi-disciplinary performance. In the 2000-01 season she
was Artist-in-Residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts where
she created an evening-length solo work called “Metamorphosis”
and the installation piece “Ice Cello”, inspired by the work of
the Fluxus artist Charlotte Moorman. Eiko and Koma commissioned the
collaboration “Be With” for solo cello and dance premiered in
live performances at he Kennedy Center, Joyce Theater, and the Yerba
Buena Center during the 2001-02 season. In June 2003 Jeanrenaud
completed and performed her hour long composition for the multi-media
piece, “In Between”, with Bay Area visual artist Tom Bonauro
featuring percussionist William Winant. In 2004 Jeanrenaud was a
featured performer and composer for San Francisco’s Other Minds
Festival writing the cello and electronics piece “Hommage” for
the occasion. In 2006 Jeanrenaud composed and performed the score for
“Humansville”, a performance installation for the Joe Goode
Performance Group. In addition to performing her own compositions,
several composers have written new works for her, including Terry
Riley, Hamza El Din, Steve Mackey, Fred Frith, Kevin Volans, Karen
Tanaka, Paul Dresher, Mark Grey, Anthony Davis, Alvin Curran and
Annie Gosfield. As an improviser she collaborates with Larry Ochs,
Miya Masaoka, Stephen Vitiello and Fred Frith among others.

Jeanrenaud
was awarded composer residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists
Program in 2007 and the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Programs at the
Montalvo Arts Center in 2008.  Currently she is developing the
installation work ‘ARIA’ with long time collaborator Alessandro
Moruzzi to be premiered in 2008. Her solo work is available on the
New Albion release of ‘Metamorphosis’ as well as many other
recordings on various labels released in the last several years. Her
new CD, ‘Strange Toys’ will be released on the Talking House
label in 2008.