Joan Jeanrenaud is perhaps best known as the cellist for the Kronos Quartet from 1978 to 1999. Her work with Kronos included more than 30 recordings and over 2000 performances that took them 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 Aries' Teatro Colon, Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow and Tokyo's Suntory Hall.  While with Kronos, she had the privilege of working with hundreds of composers and contemporary artists :  John Cage, Terry Riley, Astor Piazzolla, John Zorn, Henryk Gorecki, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Morton Feldman, Tony Williams, Elliot Carter, Hamza El Din, David Byrne, Philip Glass, Joan Armatrading, Kevin Volans, Frank Zappa and many others.

Leaving Kronos in 1999, she struck out on her own to pursue new directions as a soloist and performing artist.  She began to freely explore new directions that her interests were leading her.   She continues working with composers, improvises, arranges and composes music, and researches, produces and presents multi-media performance arts.  She is interested in not only the sound world her instrument can inhabit, but also the visual and conceptual presentation of music.

Jeanrenaud’s own composition "Altar Piece" - featured here -was written after attending an exhibit of altars made by artists in remembrance of loved ones. The piece begins slowly and somewhat aimlessly with a wispy harmonic line and then kicks in with some cool-sounding guitar fuzzbox-processed cello tracks. Soon after, another cello enters with full of pain, longing, plaintively recalling, remembering. Jeanrenaud uses several recurring motives that are then varied and layered upon. Her intonation is measured except, of course, for the fuzzbox “ba-booms.”