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Dine Doneff

Born in West Germany to Macedonian parents and raised in the Northern Greek prefecture of Edessa, Dine Doneff (or Kostas Theodorou, his Greek citizenship name) has been active as a musician and composer since the mid-eighties. Faced with the choice between school and music, he left his home village and fled to Thessaloniki. Educated his inner soul by exploring life through music, he became a self taught musician.

By the 90’s he was working as an arranger, ensemble director and producer on studio recordings. Alternating between touring abroad, he joined the group Savina Yannatou & Primavera en Salonico in 2001, with four albums released by ECM; From 2002 to 2005 he taught at the Technical Education Institute of Epirus and the University of Macedonia. Later, under the fictional auspices of ‘no bizz productions’, he became the pivot, and inspiration, of ninety nine (99), improvised public rehearsal performances in a small underground theatre in Thessaloniki from 2005 to 2011 involving onstage encounters between Doneff and musicians, dancers, actors, poets and visual artists. Interludes of composing for the theatre and silver screen interspersed with forays into theatre direction and, under the name of Tome Rapovina, directing and editing short films. From 2014 to 2016, he worked as a composer and actor with the Kammerpiele , in Munich and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and from 2014 he has been living in Munich.

As a result of his appearance as an ECM artist, Dine Doneff together with painter & photographer Fotini Potamia, proceeds to building up the label “neRED music” following a suggestion of Manfred Eicher, ECM’s founder and producer. The label’s first release is the album “Rousilvo”, which will be marketed in cooperation with ECM Records.

Collaborations (among others): Danny Hayes, Frank Köllges, Michalis Siganidis, Ara Dinkjan, Arto Tunçboyaciyan, Petro Lukas Chalkias, Luis Sclavis, Michel Godard, Sainkho Namtchylak, Theodosii Spassov, Takis Farazis, Argiris Bakirtzis, Ziad Rajab, Floros Floridis, Haig Yazdjian, Yannis Thomas, Christian Reiner, Anja Lechner, Natalia Mann, Luk Perceval...

Selective discography: Nostos, 1999 LYRA 667 Echotopia, 2003 FM 1578 Sumiglia, 2005 ECM 1903 Songs of an other, 2008 ECM 2057 Songs of Thessaloniki, 2015 ECM 2398 Rousilvo, 2018 neRED-ECM In/Out, 2019 neRED-ECM Lost Anthropology, 2021 neRED

https://www.ecmrecords.com/artists/1486461316/dine-doneff

Awards

RUTH World Music Preis 2018 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_(Musikpreis)


Tags

7
Album Review

Dine Doneff: In/Out

Read "In/Out" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski


Composer and bassist Dine Doneff's In/Out is a one-man show and a type of improvisation that seems mystical. Dubbed as a soundscape theatre for double bass and soundscapes, it is full-blown, free-flowing, and intensely narrative, an arc that is established by Doneff's interaction with samples and pre-recorded materials all performed live. Doneff is a skilled bassist with an extensive background in various improv, jazz, and cross-cultural world music bands. With a current residence in Munich, Germany, he founded ...

18
Album Review

Dine Doneff: Rousilvo

Read "Rousilvo" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski


There is more to bassist and composer Dine Doneff's record Rousilvo than simply a blending of styles and genres and eras and approaches. Certainly among his many talents is his uncanny ability to blur the line between the avant-garde, free-improv, classical, world music and jazz. It's a maneuver he has perfected over the years as the leader of his adventurous projects or as a sideman musician in other bands. With this project, Doneff certainly expands on that aesthetic and dives ...

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IN/OUT neRED-ECM album review, Jazzthetik Magazine

Dine Doneff hails from Macedonia. He grew up in Northern Greece where at times people were forbidden to speak the Macedonian language (Doneff’s ethnic mother tongue). Could it be that conditions of severe repression can help to develop the artistic eye? In any case, Doneff has eagerly and without prejudice, drawn from many musical sources that go far beyond the diverse influences of local folk music. Jazz has always been a connecting force at play, but the outlook of this highly talented multi- instrumentalist flies high above categorisation and is most especially far removed from any hackneyed world music crossover. Dine Doneff’s second, very short album invokes an imaginary theatre. The recording is an adaptation of a live performance given at an exhibition opening of Macedonian Art. This edit of the performance however carries enough strength of inventiveness to act as a standalone musical Piece in itself. The main character throughout is Double Bass; Doneff ploughing an imaginative line gilded with every conceivable timbre. The imagination of the listener is thoroughly aroused by the soundworld in this virtual-audiality, in particular from the field recordings. A Crow’s crow somewhere in Romania, a market throng in Istanbul, street musicians in Lisbon, or a tannoy announcement at an airport. Together with these are sown countless other instruments that Doneff intuitively added with just the right nuance or gesture to suit each phrase, moment, or scene perfectly. Finally, we come upon a poignant section with the addition of a female voice quartet. The culmination of all these parts serves to paint a poetic representation of how our Planet sounds. The resulting experience leaves a feeling that one has travelled much farther into this world than palpably possible in it’s actual running time of only twenty-one minutes.

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