Tanya Prochazka
Tanya Prochazka

Tanya Prochazka (Hunt ’69) was a celebrated cellist, performing with major orchestras all around the world.

Tanya Prochazka (Hunt ’69) was a celebrated cellist, performing with major orchestras around the world.

As a teenager in Melbourne she won the prestigious ABC Concerto and Vocal Competition, which enabled her to study cello with André Navarra at the Conservatoire de Paris, and later with Jacqueline du Pré in London and Janos Starker in Indiana. She toured Europe and the Middle East for several years with Ensemble I, a group based in Vienna. For two years she was Artist in Residence at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Tanya then moved to London in 1978 where she met her husband Arthur, raised their children, Sam, Andy and Helenka, taught at the Guildhall School of Music and played with ensembles and orchestras across the UK.

The family moved to Canada in 1986 where Tanya became Professor of Cello and Conductor of the University of Alberta Symphony and Academy Strings Orchestras. In 2009 illness forced her to resign and become Professor Emerita.

Highlights of her career include recitals for the ABC, BBC and CBC, recitals in Carnegie Hall and in St. Petersburg, Russia and world premieres of concertos by Alfred Fisher and Malcolm Forsyth with the Kingston and Edmonton Symphony Orchestras. She joined a string quartet on four adventurous white-water rafting trips down the Colorado River, performing full concert programs in the side-canyons and caverns of the Grand Canyon.

Her CDs include the world premiere recording of the New Goldberg Variations with pianist Jacques Després as well as recordings with pianists Stéphane Lemelin, Milton Schlosser, Sylvia Shadick Taylor and Janet Scott Hoyt.

In 2009, Tanya was inducted into the Cultural Hall of Fame of the City of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She was much loved and treasured in this city.

After enduring ovarian cancer for nine years, Tanya finally succumbed in May 2015. There was an outpouring of emotion from her former students, colleagues and family at her memorial concert in October 2015. Her Australian family and friends held a memorial concert for Tanya and her mother Marianne Hunt at the Toorak Uniting Church in December 2015.

Updated January 2016