Bulgarian-born violinist Joana Genova has built a diverse career as a chamber and orchestral musician, soloist, and pedagogue. She has been Artist Associate at Williams College since 2007 and held a position as Assistant Professor at The University of Indianapolis from 2017 to 2022. In the fall of 2022, Joana became Adjunct Professor and coordinator of chamber music at Montclair State University, and Violin/Viola Instructor at Bennington College. Joana is the second violinist of The Indianapolis Quartet, member of Taconic Chamber Players, and appears as a frequent guest at festivals and concert series. She has performed extensively on the East Coast, Midwest, Arizona, Colorado and Louisiana, and internationally in Bulgaria, Holland, Germany, Italy, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Her collaborations include The Shanghai Quartet, Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Horszowski Trio, Enso Quartet, Toby Appel, Andrés Cárdenes, Carmit Zori, Nathaniel Rosen, Nathaniel Parke, Michael Haber, Danwen Jiang, Austin Hartman, Renee Jolles, Michael Rudiakov, Tom Landschoot, Sophie Shao, Jon Klibonoff, Ruth Laredo, Gili Melamed-Lev, Davide Cabassi, David Krakauer, Deborah Buck, DuoJalal, Willis Delony and Drew Petersen, among others. She has appeared live on GNAT-TV and CAT-TV in Vermont, Wish TV Indianapolis, WQXR Albany, Vermont Public Radio-Live, WBAA and WICR in Indiana.
Joana’s recordings include Chamber Music of Vittorio Giannini, Vision: Music of the 20th and 21st Centuries, Four Seasons x2: Piazzolla and Vivaldi, Reflections and Whimsies: Chamber Music for Strings and Voice by Frank Felice, Mark Ortwein: Stretching Boundaries, Robert Paterson’s String Quartets 1-3 and Maxine Linehan’s This Time of Year. In 2022 and 2023 Joana and pianist Willis Delony recorded the complete violin sonatas of Stephen Dankner which will be released in 2024.
As soloist, Joana has been featured with the Metropolitan, Rockaway, Danbury, and Berkshire symphonies, Adelphi Chamber Orchestra, Harlem Chamber Players, Manchester Festival Orchestra, Yonkers Philharmonic, and under the baton of Raymond Leppard with the University of Indianapolis Gala Orchestra. She was concertmaster of the Amsterdam Bach Consort, a member of Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Brooklyn Philharmonic and New Haven Symphony, and assistant concertmaster of Carmel Symphony Orchestra. Joana is principal second violinist of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra and in 23-24 season will appear as guest concertmaster of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra.
Joana graduated from National Music School “Dobrin Petkov” in Plovdiv where she made her solo debut at age 12 with the Plovdiv Chamber Orchestra and is a top prizewinner of the “Svetoslav Obretenov” National Competition in Bulgaria. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and her master’s in chamber music at the Rotterdam Conservatory in The Netherlands. Her teachers include Boyanka Shopova, Alexander Spirov, Peter Brunt, Ilya Grubert, and Samuel Thaviu. Joana performs on a Johannes Cuypers violin made in The Hague in 1786.