Site Content

Kris Yenney, M.M. ~ cellist, conductor, composer, and educator ~ and long time Bay Area Music Maven... received her Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music, Her primary teachers have been Margaret Rowell, Bonnie Hampton, Irene Sharp and Irving Klein (California); Timothy Eddy, Robert Levin (New York) & Colin Carr, Benjamin Zander, Louis Krasner, Leonard Shure and Gunther Schuller (Boston). Continuing Post Graduate studies have been conducted at such institutions as the Julliard School (NY), the Tanglewood Institute (MASS), the Banff (Alberta) Centre for the Arts and the Chisti Sabri School of Classical Indian Music (Marin, CA and Jaipur, India).

Director and Senior Chamber Music Workshop Faculty for the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestras for the past couple of decades, Kris has also served as Director of Orchestras and of the Chamber Music Societies at the Woodside Priory School in Portola Valley, at Nueva Learning Center in Hillsborough and at Sacred Heart Prep - Atherton. Kris was a founding member of the cutting-edge Left Coast Chamber Ensemble of San Francisco and performs currently with "A Capriccio" and the Celtic and Early Music Trio, "Broceliande ( www.broceliande.org )," which has recorded 6 critically acclaimed cds on the Flowinglass Music label and has been featured guests on Sedge Thompson's "West Coast Live," JoAnn Mar's "Folk Music and Beyond," Dave Stafford's "Friday Folk-Off" and other local radio shows.  A past member of the New England String Quartet (NESQ) of Boston, Kris also co-founded the Palo Alto Sunrise Quartet and has played as a free-lance cellist in innumerable local ensembles of various stripes such as the San Jose Symphony and Midsummer Mozart Orchestras, the West Bay and San Jose Opera companies, TheatreWorks, "Espressivo," etc..... 

Kris has backed up Rod Stewart, Lyle Lovett and Smokey Robinson when they perform locally. She teaches cello and chamber music privately and can be heard on numerous recordings ranging from Classical to Celtic to Jazz. Highlights of her musical life have included presenting a quintet performance at the Isabel Gardner Museum with Yo-Yo Ma and NESQ, performing and recording with Jazz pianist Fred Hersch, competing in the Evian, France International String Quartet Competition (NESQ) and being the first woman to win the prestigious John W Work III award in composition for her original setting of Lewis Carroll's "JABBERWOCKY."  Kris currently  helms the merry "M'EarthTones" Choir and the newly established West Side Ensemble and enjoys collecting and tackling stringed instruments of the World...