Early life Ysanne was raised in London, where she studied piano, violin and guitar. She began touring Europe aged 13, playing classical chamber music repertoire including Mozart, Vivaldi and Haydn under the direction of Susan Collier, who is the mother of
Jacob Collier. Her great uncle, Edward Summers, was a professional violinist who played for silent movies, and her cousin is classical violinist Geoffrey Trabichoff. After studying composition and conducting with violin at The
Royal College of Music, London, and then later CuBase and Music Technology at Community Music, with teachers Aniruddha Das and
Steve Chandra Savale, she traveled to India, studying classical Indian music and sitar in the city of
Varanasi before joining their band, Asian Dub Foundation, as a guest violinist for their first album,
Rafi's Revenge. In 1995, Ysanne began to play electric violin with electronics for many producers and DJs in the underground
Acid House,
Techno and
Drum and Bass music scenes of London, notably with
Sister Bliss from
Faithless,
Tiesto,
Talvin Singh,
T Power and
Tsuyoshi Suzuki.
Rock, Pop and Soundtrack Composing Career Ysanne began her recording career in 1996 by recording and releasing her first studio album, under the moniker Mee. Even in this first work, she relies heavily on
Extended technique while playing an acoustic violin made from aluminum alloy. In 1997 she began collaborating with
Philip Clemo and released the album
Sound – Inhale the Colours with him. Later that year on 25 June, she played electric violin with
Laurie Anderson at the
Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the South Bank
Meltdown Festival. In 1999 she recorded another album with
Philip Clemo,
Soundzero, which was not released until 2008. The same year she participated to various
neofolk compilations, notably
The Pact ...Of the Gods (Fremdheit),
Torture Garden – Bizarre & Eccentric (Torture Garden Records), and the split single with
Death in June We Said Destroy as part of the band
Fire + Ice. She also produced the music on the album
Time Dragons, a spoken word album. She moved to America the year after. In 2008, she played violin, viola and electric violin for visual artist
Doug Aitken's work
sleepwalkers. The film featured
Tilda Swinton,
Donald Sutherland and
Cat Power, and premiered at
MoMA in New York. In 2009, Ysanne recorded the track
Salahadeen with the
Master Musicians of Joujouka,
David J and Dub Gabriel. The same year she was also the string contractor for
Ray Bradbury's 'Chrysalis' and toured with
David J. In 2010 she directed the music and sang live at the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art for visual performance artist
Vanessa Beecroft's work
VB68. It was the 68th work where Beecroft arranged women as art, but the 1st work where any women have made a noise. The performance lasted for two hours, with Ysanne singing and vocalising Beecroft's manifesto. The same year she composed the soundtracks to two full-length feature films: To Be Friends for brothers Jim and
Aaron Eckhart, and The Owls for
Cheryl Dunye and her strings were commissioned for HBO's
Big Love. She also played strings on the
Smashing Pumpkins Teargarden by Kaleidyscope EP series that featured
Billy Corgan,
Kerry Brown and
Linda Strawberry. In September 2011, Ysanne joined
David J and
Ego Plum to play music for the Los Angeles stage production of ''The Chanteuse and the Devil's Muse
, and in November 2011, she joined David for the Los Angeles stage production of Silver for Gold
and the Redcat Theater. David J played bass guitar on her new album, Coldwater'', which was released in 2013. In 2013, Ysanne's song and film,
The Mermaid Song, sold 24,000 copies, released in collaboration with
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and
LUSH (company), as featured in the
Los Angeles Times and internationally. In 2016, Ysanne created a multisensory performance with music, food, technology, video and other modalities, as featured in The Huffington Post and widely reported internationally. She was interviewed about this for Future Human from
Nokia Bell Labs In 2017, she presented a
TED Talk about creating multi-sensory, multidisciplinary work that is
Crossmodal. She also wrote orchestral arrangements and recordings that were released on the
Psychic TV album, Fishscales Falling. She primarily composes soundtracks for film, commercials, and documentaries, including her original music for ads for
Vans,
Chanel, and
Mars.
Food Writing Career In addition to her music career, Ysanne has a dual career as a cookbook author, and as a writer about food, culture, and lifestyle for magazines. Her first cookbook,
Organic Cookbook, was published in 1996. She has had thirteen cookbooks published including
Fresh & Wild - A Real Food Adventure which was commissioned by
Whole Foods Market and published by
HarperCollins in 2003. In 2015,
Rizzoli Bookstore published a cookbook she co-wrote
The Ranch at Live Oak Cookbook and the book was praised by
The New York Times and
Vogue,
Harper's Bazaar alongside other international mainstream media. In September 2018, her cookbook
Vegetable Cakes was published by Lorenz Books. In addition, she has managed edible estates for
William Shatner,
Patrick Dempsey and
Angela Lindvall and cooked for members of the entertainment and wellness community, including
Joshua Bell and
Sharon Salzberg.
Sensory Experience Design Career Since 2014, Ysanne has combined her knowledge of music and food by creating immersive experiences based on emerging
crossmodal scientific understanding of how the sense perceptions are inter-related and integrated. In September 2016, Ysanne's multisensory experiences were praised in
Yahoo! News,
Huffington Post,
The Express Tribune, and Cool Hunting. ==Incomplete Discography==