Kristen Jones - cello, steel pans, backing vocals.

Kristen Jones joined ilyAIMY ostensibly just to add some sweet cello flavour to 2009's CD "A Gift for Saint Cecilia". But then she got stuck with us. Oh, that poor girl.

Kristen was already classically trained on cello when she discovered the steel pan at Oberlin College.  She has performed with steelbands in Trinidad, New York and the DC-metro area and for over 10 years was an arranger and bandleader with Pan Masters Steel Orchestra.  Now performing on electric cello - and focusing on more eclectic projects on both instruments - she brings an incredibly diverse musical background to ilyAIMY's sound and even knows how to... like... write the music down and stuff.

When not playing with ilyAIMY you can find her performing with other local acts - like 50 Man Machine, mOsno, sahffi - or even managing Takoma Park's exotic instrument shop House of Musical Traditions, where she excercises her Ethnomusicology degree tuning violins, ordering sitars and identifying taropatch ukuleles.

Kristen's gear:
Kristen performs with a Ned Steinberger Designs electric cello and records with an acoustic cello built by Daniel Foster. We've been trying to get her to play with distortion pedals and wah pedals and stuff, but she seems to do just fine with a bow and some fingers.

“I was immediately taken with what I heard from her.  She found sonic spaces within the songs that I didn’t know existed and nestled right in, whether she was plucking out a bassline or using a bow to coax out a solo.”   -Michael Duck, The Morning Call