Ioanna Kanatsou
Ioanna Kanatsou was born in 1975 in Thessaloniki and began her cello studies at the age of 6 at the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki, in the class of Renos Baltas. She graduated in 1994 with a Cello Diploma with the grade of “Excellent” and continued her studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz in Austria, under the guidance of Professor Florian Kitt, completing her studies in 2000. Since 2001, she has been a permanent member of the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra (Tutti category). At the same time, she was a member of “Loksi Falanga”, the band of the late songwriter Nikos Papazoglou. For the last ten years, he has been artistically active through the pioneering ensemble “Contra Duo”, a duet with the three-string bouzouki soloist Panagiotis Koutsouras. The ensemble presents well-known classical music pieces orchestrated for cello and bouzouki by Panagiotis Koutsouras. In addition, for the last two years, he has been actively collaborating with the ensemble “Les Filadores”, performing Sephardic music in orchestrations by the harp and soprano soloist, Nagia Miserli.