Joan Jeanrenaud was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1956 and raised on a farm there. She studied cello with Peter Sturbeck in high school and went to Indiana University in Bloomington, where she studied with Fritz Magg. After graduation, she went to Geneva and worked with cellist Pierre Fournier before joining the Kronos Quartet in 1978. About that time Kronos made the decision to perform only contemporary music, took on the management of the ensemble and went on the road for several years, traveling with their instruments in a small Toyota. Important early influences were Charlotte Moorman and the Fluxus movement. In 1998 she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and because of the changing nature of Kronos, she decided to leave the ensemble and compose her own music. She has since had a long working relationship with composer Terry Riley, who has composed music for her, and she has been a successful and prolific composer in diverse styles in her own right. She has had commissions from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Asian Art Museum, among others, for new work, and in 2008 she earned a Grammy nomination for Strange Toys.