Joan Jeanrenaud is a cellist, composer, arranger, and improviser. She was the cellist of the Kronos Quartet for 20 years. Her work with Kronos included more than 30 recordings and over 2000 performances that took her to virtually every major concert hall worldwide. During those years the group became, in the words of The New York Times critic John Rockwell, "the world's best known, most innovative contemporary-music quartet." Jeanrenaud's cello is a Deconet, ca. 1750. A copy of that cello was carved out of ice and played with "bows" made of saws, barbed wire and sandpaper in her four-hour performance piece Ice Cello, an adaptation of Charlotte Moorman's Ice Music for London. Her solo CDs include ‘Strange Toys’ (nominated for a ’08 Grammy), ‘Pop-Pop’, ‘Metamorphosis’ and soon to be released ‘Visual Music’, featuring her compositions for Dance, Theater and Art Museums. She has also recorded with dozens of other artists, and performed on many film scores.
Joan was an ARC artist-in-residence from 2008 to 2009.