Yona Zekri

Yona Zekri is a French violist, recognised for her career as a chamber musician and soloist with a range of ensembles across France and internationally. Her journey, shaped by outstanding training and demanding artistic commitments, has established her as a distinctive voice in the world of classical and contemporary music.

She trained first at the Conservatoire de Perpignan, then at the Conservatoire de Boulogne-Billancourt, before joining the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMD), where she deepened her expertise in both performance and pedagogy. She furthered her studies at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck, Germany, broadening her command of the chamber and orchestral repertoire with a European perspective.

After working with several national orchestras and teaching at the Conservatoire de Nice, Yona Zekri established an artistic identity firmly rooted in ensemble music: she founded the Quatuor Naïs and contributed to the creation of ensembles dedicated to contemporary music. As a performing artist, she appears in prestigious festivals and concert series, including the Festival de Musique de Menton, as well as in Paris, Monaco, and along the Côte d'Azur.

A member of the ensemble Mêtis, she collaborates with musicians from major international formations, including the renowned West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and develops programmes that showcase the viola repertoire in all its breadth — from the classical canon to the most recent contemporary works.

As part of the Les Gardiennes de la Mer artistic residency at Résidences Rocabella, Yona Zekri returns to a landscape she knows and cherishes: the Mediterranean, whose shores she has long frequented through festivals and concerts along the Côte d'Azur and in Monaco. Yet this residency offers her something rare — time for listening, exploration, and creation, free from the demands of the concert schedule.

For a musician whose viola is distinguished by its deep colours and inner resonances, the sea becomes a direct source of inspiration: its shifting timbres, charged silences, and sudden surges enter into natural dialogue with the unique qualities of her instrument. This residency nourishes her reflection on the viola repertoire — from the classical to the contemporary — and on how chamber music can become a language of sharing, intimacy, and encounter, echoing the intercultural exchanges that have defined her career.