Joan Jeanrenaud

Joan’s Wikipedia page Joan’s website

Joan Jeanrenaud is an American cellist who played with the internationally-renowned Kronos Quartet from 1978 until 1999. Her work with Kronos included more than 30 recordings and over 2000 performances that took her to virtually every major concert hall worldwide including Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Sydney Opera House, Teatro La Scala, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colon, Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. While with Kronos Joan worked with hundreds of composers and contemporary artists including: John Cage, Terry Riley, Astor Piazzolla, John Zorn, Henryk Gorecki, Hamza El Din, David Byrne, Philip Glass, Joan Armatrading, Frank Zappa and many others.

In 1999, in part due to being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she left to pursue a solo career and collaborations with other artists. In this WisdomVR piece Joan shares about her connection with the cello and how that has been a constant sustaining force in her life. Since focusing her energy on her solo work and composition, she has staged and recorded solo performance pieces. Her first solo album, Metamorphosis, was described by Greg Cahill in Strings as "visceral and hypnotic.” In 2008, her album Strange Toys was nominated for a Grammy Award and several tracks were recorded with PC Muñoz, with whom Jeanrenaud recorded a full album, Pop-Pop, in 2010. She also has performed in collaborations at San Francisco’s De Young Museum, in many film scores by composer William Susman and appears on the soundtrack CDs for Oil on Ice (2005), Fate of the Lhapa (2007) and Music for Moving Pictures (2009).

Jeanrenaud plays a Deconet cello made in 1750. Besides composing, improvising and arranging music,  as well as researching, producing and presenting multi-media performance arts, Joan is interested in not only the sound world her instrument can inhabit but also the visual and conceptual presentation of music. Interviews with Joan are available here and here, and if you’d like to explore her music further, additional videos are below.

To get the most from these experiences, view using an Oculus Go, GearVR or Google Daydream/Cardboard headset and use the SamsungVR app. For other headsets, watch on YoutubeVR using this link here and then add the video to your custom Wisdom Teachers playlist to access in VR. Need help with the SamsungVR app? Click here.