Kris Yvon Yenney ~ "Cagefree Musician"
BIO
Kris Yvon 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 in Boston. Her primary teachers have included 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; the Chisti Sabri School of Classical Indian Music (Marin, CA and Jaipur, India) and Sabhol Mor Oistag (Isle of Skye)...
Director and Senior Chamber Music Workshop Faculty for the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestras from 1999 until recently relocating to Ashland, Kris also served as Director of Orchestras and founder 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. She was a founding member of the cutting-edge Left Coast Chamber Ensemble of San Francisco and now performs locally (Ashland) with Ukrainian pianist, Iryna Kudielina and works with the Rogue Valley Symphony organization as a mentor/teacher and occasional sub in the cello section. She has served as principal cellist for the Jefferson Baroque Orchestra and on occasion in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Much Ado - '24 and Into The Woods - '25). In 2025, Kris founded the "Fellowship of the Strings" collective with local (and some distant) colleagues.
With the Celtic and Early Music Trio, "Broceliande (https://broceliande.org )," Kris plays cello, gamba, nyckelharpa and sings. Brocelïande has been together for over 25 years and has recorded 6 critically acclaimed cds on the Flowinglass Music label. They have been featured Public Radio live-in-studio guests on Sedge Thompson's "West Coast Live," JoAnn Mar's "Folk Music and Beyond," Dave Stafford's "Friday Folk-Off" and other West Coast 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 (Bay Area) ensembles of various stripes such as the San Jose Symphony and Midsummer Mozart Orchestras, Schola Cantorum, 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 (Bay Area). She teaches cello and chamber music privately and can be heard on numerous recordings ranging in styles 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 Directed the merry (and unruly) "M'EarthTones" Choir for 20+ seasons before moving to Oregon and is looking to establish the "Fellowship of the Strings" flexible ensemble between Cage Free Concert (https://cagefreeconcerts.com) productions she curates and promotes - CFC is now in it's 6th year. Between gigs, Kris enjoys the resident sheep, her cats, her idyllic surroundings and collecting and tackling stringed instruments of the World...