Dine Doneff

Macedonian Multi-instrumentalist and Composer

Born in West Germany to Macedonian parents and raised in the Northern Greek prefecture of Edessa, Dine Doneff has been active as a musician and composer since the middle 80’s. Faced with choice between school and music, 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. His first album “Nostos” came out in 1999 with the music label LYRA in Athens. Then, in 2010 with the help of a friend and a book publisher in Thessaloniki, he released a limited edition of Rousilvo, the second part of a trilogy after Nostos. As a result of his appearance as an ECM artist, 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 edition is the album Rousilvo which is marketed in cooperation with ECM Records.