The New York Times has hailed cellist Andrew Janss for his “glowing tone,” “insightful musicianship,” and “sumptuous elegance.” Andrew began his career as founding cellist of the Escher Quartet, winning the 2010-2012 Bowers residency at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Since then, Mr. Janss has performed and recorded across the world alongside legendary classical artists including Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zukerman, as well as chart-topping artists Norah Jones, Paul McCartney, Lana del Rey, and Bruce Springsteen. His principal teachers include Andrew Cook, David Geber, Clive Greensmith, and David Soyer.

As a non-profit arts leader for nearly two decades, Mr. Janss has spearheaded and launched multiple ground-breaking music education and music medicine initiatives, most recently while Executive Director and Co-Artistic Director of the non-profit organization Project: Music Heals Us. These initiatives include Music For The Future, a college-accredited music composition program for incarcerated individuals, and the Vital Sounds Initiative, a 1-on-1 virtual bedside concert (VBC) program for isolated hospital patients, the first iteration of which (for which he was nominated by Yo-Yo Ma for a prestigious Emerson Collective Fellowship) produced over 15,000 individual VBC concerts across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. He continues to develop VBC work in his dual roles as President of the Amplify Foundation and Music Advisor to the Stanford School of Medicine.

Finally, in an effort to combat deforestation issues created by the flood of cheap, single-use bows in music education (bows that cannot be re-haired and have to be thrown out after a single school year), Mr. Janss teamed up with a New York City bowmaker and a Stanford University engineer to launch the world’s first viable self-rehairable bow, utilizing a cartridge-based rehair system that allows a player or teacher to change out old hair for new in under 60 seconds. To learn how you can get these into your local schools, visit janssbow.com.

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Photo credit: Barbara Kinney