Jennifer Culp

Cellist Jennifer Culp is a well-traveled California native who has enjoyed a rich and diversified musical career. She has been professor of cello and chamber music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music since 2007. Teaching and performing at two favorite summer festivals, Kneisel Hall and Zephyr International Chamber Music Festival, aligned music with nature. An avid chamber musician , she has performed with many inspired musicians, including members of the Juilliard, Cleveland, and Amadeus quartets; Sandor Vegh; Walter Trampler; Laurence Lesser; Gil Kalish; Felix Galimir; Seymour Lipkin; Menahem Pressler; Dawn Upshaw; Irina Schnittke; Tom Waits; and the Romanian Gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks. Always keenly interested in new music, Culp was the cellist of the Kronos Quartet from 1998 to 2005, performing at such venues as the Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, WOMAD festival in New Zealand, and London’s Barbican Center. The Kronos Quartet was named Musical America’s 2003 Musicians of the Year and won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance in 2004 with Berg’s Lyric Suite. Through close collaboration with living composers, Culp has recorded numerous world premieres on Nonesuch, New Albion, CRI, Sony, Albany, and New World Records. She has also performed and toured with the Dunsmuir Piano Quartet, Philadelphia String Quartet, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. She visited the haunted world of Cornwall, England, for seven years to participate in the International Seminar at Prussia Cove for Open Chamber Music, at which mentors Sándor Végh and György Kurtág inspired nonstop music readings late into the night.