It is currently underway and has been given the working title “Prologue.” Yoffe’s relationship with guitars is closely tied to his country of origin. “I first heard the guitar played as the instrument of songwriters in Russia. They played the guitar in kitchens and sang songs that critically addressed the political and social circumstances in Russia.”

Boris Yoffe was born in Petersburg in 1968. He received his first violin lessons in 1976, and in 1979 started taking composing lessons with G. Metallidi and S. Bilimov. As part of his private studies, Yoffe worked with the popular Russian music theorist Stratievsky and then graduated from Rimsky-Korsakov Music Academy in his hometown with a diploma as a violinist and violin teacher. Boris Yoffe not only is an idiosyncratic composer, but also a universal musician, who is equally skilled as an instrument player, a conductor, and a music theorist. He has mastered many composition styles, has worked as a theater composer in Petersburg, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, and has authored many successful arrangements and adaptations.

Those who listen to the mostly intimate world of sound that Yoffe creates with his short pieces–many of them for quartets, and others for mixed ensembles with harp, brass instruments and strings–encounter a world of extreme concentration and sensitivity. “His sense of sound is extraordinary, not in the sense of creating pleasant sound structures, but because of its polylinear development,” comments Wolfgang Rihm. For years, Yoffe has divided his time between writing compositions and essays on musical and philosophical questions.

http://www.borisyoffe.de