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 the rest of her time practising the cello until closing time at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal where she studied with Denis Brott. In the summers she attended music schools such as Toronto Summer Music, Music Academy of the West and the Banff Centre, but unfortunately she had not found her passion for the mountains yet and was a rather grumpy hiker.

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 2025, she became an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

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, Yoanna’s latest performance was Kabalevsky’s outstanding Second Cello Concerto with the South East London Orchestra. Another memorable one was a Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Jersey Symphony Orchestra at less than 48 hours notice in 2024. That was thrilling, especially as she got the voicemail after half a bottle of wine and a day of rock climbing, but 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.

Yoanna is a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Barbican Quartet. In 2022, they 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, and the quartet regularly performs in halls such as Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Berlin, Laeszhalle Hamburg and Wigmore Hall 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 coached chamber music at the Royal Academy of Music where she was a Nina Drucker Fellow between 2023 and 2025. She has given chamber masterclasses in the UK, Germany, Belgium and Argentina.

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, Drummondville, Quebec, to whom she is grateful every day.

Yoanna is an avid trail runner, and has completed several ultramarathons including the Lake District Ultra Challenge 100km where she was the fifth female finisher, and Epona 100, a one hundred mile journey through the Black Mountains in Wales.