Yoanna Prodanova was born in Varna, Bulgaria and spent her childhood singing and playing the piano. In the summers, she would go wild camping at a beautiful remote beach with her parents. At 11, with decisiveness, single-mindedness and an utter lack of self doubt which she will keep trying to recreate in later life, she picked up the cello, started taking lessons, and three months later passed the Varna National School for the Arts entrance exams. When she was 14, the family immigrated to Canada and Yoanna spent the next six years learning how to handle the 80 degree Celsius difference between the seasons in Montréal. She learned English with her Salvadoran friend Reyna in French speaking school, and spent all the rest of her time practising the cello until closing time at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal where she studied with Denis Brott.

When she was 20, Yoanna decided that she must move back to Europe, and chose the UK as her next adventure. She studied at the Guildhall School with Louise Hopkins, Rebecca Gilliver and Richard Lester and obtained her Bachelor and Master’s degrees. She then completed the Advanced Diploma course at the Royal Academy of Music with Hannah Roberts, where she had the pleasure to perform Haydn’s C major concerto with the RAM Orchestra led by the Doric String Quartet, and was awarded the Bicentenary Scholarship.

In 2019, Yoanna recorded her debut CD for Linn Records. It contains music by Janacek, Fauré and Chopin particularly close to her heart, with the fantastic pianist Mihai Ritivoiu. She has also recorded the Brahms clarinet trio for Orchid Classics with the outstanding Somi Kim and Joseph Shiner.

As a soloist, her latest performance was the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Jersey Symphony Orchestra at less than 48 hours notice. That was thrilling, and according to one music critic at the Jersey Evening Post “she found a wistfully poetic language in the haunting slow movement”. She performed the rarely played Finzi cello concerto in November 2023 with the Banbury Symphony, and earlier in the year Brahms Double concerto with Charlie Lovell-Jones and Orchestra of St John’s. She has played concerti with numerous orchestras across the UK namely the Hastings Philharmonic, Amati Orchestra, the Croydon Symphony, Surrey Philharmonic, and the South East London Orchestra. Future engagements include Kabalevsky’s rarely performed 2nd cello concerto in 2025.

In 2022 Yoanna’s string quartet, the Barbican Quartet, won the First Prize and four special prizes at the ARD International String Quartet Competition in Munich. Their debut album, Manifesto on Love was released in 2024 to great critical acclaim. The quartet regularly perform internationally in halls such as Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Berlin, Laeszhalle Hamburg among others, and are in constant search of creative programme ideas and good food. Her appetite for chamber music leads her regularly to festivals such as Peasmarsh, OCM Prussia Cove, Montréal Chamber Music Festival, Siete Lagos Festival in Patagonia, Rencontres de violoncelle de Bélaye in France and others. She currently coaches chamber music at the Royal Academy of Music where she is a Nina Drucker Fellow with the Barbican Quartet.

Yoanna plays on a late 18th century cello made by Giovanni Gagliano and a bow made by François Nicolas Voirin, generously on loan from the Canimex Group, for which she is grateful every day.

Yoanna is an avid trail runner, and has completed several ultramarathons: North Downs Ridge 50, Chilterns 50km and Lake District 100km where she was the fifth female finisher. She also enjoys rock climbing, and her current favourite author is Jon Fosse.