Igor Iofe’s musical journey, began with piano lessons at age 4, has already taken him on a long and varied course. Although practicing and performing on the violin, trumpet, and as a baritone, it is composition that has become Igor’s most chosen path till 2019. Currently Igor’s focus in music turned back to playing trumpet. He performs Armenian traditional duduk repertoire on a quartertone trumpet. He brings the beauty and warmth of the duduk into his trumpet playing.
Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Igor took to music in early childhood and never looked back. Focusing on the trumpet during his adolescence, he progressed enough to be rewarded with his first musical award, a performance prize in the Navruz festival in Tashkent in 1997. 2001 brought a further accomplishment as he won a prize the Republican Young Musicians’ competition. Shortly after, Igor began to sing as a baritone in choirs, which he continues to do to this day, often assuming the role of the ensemble leader. Since 2018 Igor sings solo as well.
Although he had improvised on the piano since childhood, composition in earnest came up for Igor thanks to the encouragement of his friend Artur Dobrynin, who immediately urged him to take lessons after hearing him improvise. After uneventful early lessons, Dobrynin himself became Igor’s first teacher, and by 2004 Igor had enrolled in composition courses with Polina Medyulyanova in the Uspensky Lyceum where he was studying. After graduating the following year, he continued into the State Conservatory of Uzbekistan to study with Felix Yanov-Yanovsky. Igor’s potential began to develop and both 2006 and 2007 brought awards in composition from the Uzbekistan Union of Composers and selection to the Omnibus Laboratorium workshop where his music was performed.
Interested and apt in great variety of musical styles and contexts, Igor has remained dedicated to composition ever since; after graduating in Uzbekistan he found his way to the Conservatory of Amsterdam, where in addition to regular lessons with Wim Hendrickx and Richard Ayres, he has crossed paths with Tristan Murail, Fabio Nieder, Willem Jeths, Jorrit Tamminga & Misato Mochizuki. The myriad of activity present there has not been lost on Igor, who has collaborated in the Atlas Academy, Looptail, Project 128, Keuris Quartet, Nieuw Ensemble, International Young Composers Academy in Tchaikovsky city and the Netherlands Film and Television Academy’s annual festival among many others. As of 2013, he graduated in the Conservatory’s Film Composition Course under Jurre Haanstra as a Master’s of Music.
Igor’s music has been performed at such venues as Muziekgebouw aan ‘t Ij, Tivoli Vredenburg, De Link, De Duif, Het Bethaniënklooster, Het Veem, STEIM at various events including Composers’ Festival Amsterdam, An Evening of Today, Grachten Festival and Gaudeamus Muziekweek.
Igor has never lost a passion for exploring new musical frontiers, but his driving goal as a musician is to unite a high musical standard with an awareness of context – to make music that fills the role where it is needed, a task which redefines itself with every new work.
Igor Iofe 