Ysanne Spevack (born 24 June 1972) is a British composer, conductor and arranger who plays violin, viola and cello, and assorted multi-instruments including mbira, keyboards and guitar.
best known for her work recording and touring with the Smashing Pumpkins, David J, Michael Stipe, Tiesto, Elton John, Christina Perri, Hawkwind, Psychic TV, and Asian Dub Foundation.
In 2018 she announced that her name has changed to Meena Ysanne.She has a prominent second career as a food writer.
Her thirteen books about food have been published by HarperCollins and other book publishers internationally, and have led to her writing about food for the Los Angeles Times and other leading outlets internationally.
She was based in Los Angeles from 2004-2015, where she shaped a career arranging strings and playing acoustic and electric violin, and composing original music for soundtracks, notably for two feature films: To Be Friends and The Owls.
Her performance and arranging work for film, TV and multiple recording artists touches upon several genres, including orchestral, rock music, pop music, world music, and film scores.
Since 2014, she has been designing multisensory, multimedia immersive experiences based on her music compositions and emerging ideas from neuroscience and psychology.
To do this, she leads a team of artists and scientists from many disciplines for each event.
In May 2017, she presented a TEDx Talk about this work in Bend, Oregon.
She is based between New York, London and Los Angeles.