Janna Polyzoides was born in Graz, Austria, as the daughter of the musician couple Christos and Katherina Polyzoides and is living in Vienna. She studied with Sebastian Benda at the University of Music in Graz. Additional influential teachers were Rudolf Kehrer, Alexander Jenner, Eliane Richepin and György Kurtág.
Her career has led to appearances at festivals, such as Wien modern, Menuhin festival in Gstaad, styriarte festival in Graz and Wiener Festwochen. She has been invited to many concert halls, for example the Cologne Philharmony, Wigmore Hall London, Musikhalle Hamburg, Athens Music Hall, Warsaw Philharmony, Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, Mozarteum Salzburg (with the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss am Rhein and the Haydn Orchestra Bozen). Recently she toured to Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Great Britain, Poland, Israel, China, Japan, Oman and the USA.
As a chamber musician she has regularly performed as a member of the „Arcus Ensemble Wien“ (with Erich Oskar Huetter, violoncello and Andreas Schablas, clarinet), and the „Camerata Polyzoides“, formed by all the members of her musician family. Together with her brother, the violinist Demetrius Polyzoides, she has formed the Duo Polyzoides. From 1998-2009 she also had a steady musical association with the cellist Martin Hornstein.
Among the chamber music partners of Janna Polyzoides have been artists like Erich Höbarth, Rainer Honeck, Christian Altenburger, Daniel Sepec, Ernst Kovacic, Christophe Coin, Franz Bartolomey, Reinhard Latzko, François Benda, Gerald Pachinger, Matthias Schorn, members of the Artis Quartet, Aron Quartet, Klangforum Vienna, Gürzenich Quartet, Cologne String Sextet and many others.
Janna Polyzoides does not miss an occasion to explore historic sounds, playing on period instruments (Fortepiano or Hammerklavier, instruments built around 1790 to 1850). She owns a fortepiano from the estate of the late Martin Hornstein, which was built in 1863 by Johann Baptist Streicher & Son and restored in 2012. With this Fortepiano she also gives concerts on regular basis.
On the other hand her vital interest in contemporary music and her continuous collaboration with composers like Friedrich Cerha, Christian Ofenbauer, Yannis Xenakis, György Ligeti, Iván Eröd, have resulted in many dedications and first performances of contemporary works, many of them she has also recorded.
She is Art Director and Lecturer of the Masterclasses of the 51st “Internationale Musiktage” in Aigen-Schlägl, Böhmerwald (Upper Austria).
Up until now the musical work of Janna Polyzoides has been documented on 35 solo and chamber music CDs, some of those award-winning: Christian Ofenbauer’s piano concerto with the Radio-Symphony-Orchestra Vienna (ORF), the “Arcus Ensemble Wien” with Trios by Carl Frühling, Johannes Brahms and Alexander Zemlinksy (SKF), a triple solo CD with piano compositions by Thomas Heinisch and Christian Ofenbauer (einklang_records), a CD (Neos) with works by Friedrich Cerha and in 2021 a live CD production of the complete works for violin and piano by Eugène Ysaÿe (Paladino Music) has been released with the Duo Polyzoides.