“Pietro is a musician not only technically very well prepared but also gifted with a poetic and sophisticated expressiveness, able to make his instrument sing and to follow the composer’s musical thoughts with imagination and empathy”
DARIO MARIANELLI (Oscar Prize Winner)

With the accordion on his shoulder, Pietro Roffi has traveled the world. Born in 1992, he began playing the accordion at the age of six and graduated with full marks and honourable mention at the Conservatory “S. Cecilia” in Rome. He debuted as a soloist at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under the baton of Carlo Rizzari, playing a Serenata composed by the Oscar winner Dario Marianelli to celebrate the Ennio Morricone's 90th birthday, in the presence of the President of the Italian Republic. Pietro carries out an intense concert activity and he performed in more than one hundred and fifty concerts all over the world as soloist and with symphonic orchestras, in prestigious concert halls as the “Die Glocke” in Bremen (Germany) with the Internationalen Jugendsinfonieorchesters, in which he performed the “Fairy Tales” concerto for accordion and orchestra by V. Trojan, and the “Romanian Athenaeum” in Bucharest (Romania) with the National Youth Orchestra directed by Gabriel Bebeselea, meeting great acclaim by the audience and by the critics. He also went on tour in Lithuania, where he debuted with the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach in 2017, in Italy (playing among others for IUC Concerti alla Sapienza, for Unione Musicale, Mantova Chamber Music Festival, at the Teatro del Grande Eliseo, at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, for Expo Milano 2015, for Notti a Castel Sant’Angelo, for Nuova Consonanza, at the Narnia Festival, Teatro Vittorio Emanuele in Messina, etc.), in England (at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the Peterborough Cathedral), in Argentina (with a sold-out tour in thirteen cities), in Malta (Bir Miftuħ International Music Festival), in China (Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen and at the Nanjing University of Arts), in Australia (Melbourne and Woodend Winter Arts Festival in the Victoria State), in Brazil (in Rio de Janeiro, at the Sala Italia and the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes) in Croatia, Spain and Norway. In 2017 he played the concert Suite from the music for the movie "Anna Karenina" by Dario Marianelli as soloist with the Roma Tre Orchestra at the Teatro Palladium in Rome and at the Teatro Verdi in Pordenone, under the Luciano Acocella's baton; in that occasion, he met the Oscar Prize composer who called him to record the new soundtrack for the movie “Nome di donna” directed by Marco Tullio Giordana. In 2010 he won the First Prize at the International Competition of Castefidardo (virtuoso category). He attended seminars with pioneers of the accordion as O. Murray (UK), C. Jacomucci (Italy), Y. Shishkin (Russia), F. Angelis (France), M. Rantanen (Finland), S. Hussong (Germany), C. X. Qing (China), R. Sviackevicius (Lithuania), I. Alberdi (Spain), A. Melichar (Austria) and at the Rome Conservatory under the guidance of Massimiliano Pitocco. He recently recorded the live EP “Tutto Tango” for Continuo Records including music of Astor Piazzolla with the pianist Alessandro Stella. Pietro also made his debut as a composer by publishing a CD for the Italian label INRI Classic (Il Nuovo Rumore Italiano), “1999”; this album won the Orpheus Award 2021 as "Best Accordion Album" in 2019/2020. His "Nocturne" for accordion and string quintet was included in the album "Piazzolla Reflections" by Ksenija Sidorova released in 2021 on the Alpha Classics label. He gave master classes at the National University of Music in Bucharest and recorded live concerts for national TVs and radios in Romania, Italy and China. He is invited every year for representing Italy by Embassies and Italian Institutes of Culture in the world. He recently recorded the soundtrack of “Pinocchio” (by Matteo Garrone with Roberto Benigni) written by Dario Marianelli and recorded/co-produced with the Italian band Mokadelic the music for the series “La Garçonne” (France2). His music can be heard on major classical music radios (BBC 3, WDR 3, Klassik Radio, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, NPO, Rás 1, Antena 2 Portugal, DR P2, etc…) and in concert halls; recently some of his compositions for accordion and string quintet were performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In September 2021 he makes debut with the "Goldberg Rework" - composed by himself - together with the Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova. Pietro plays a Scandalli Extreme built in Castelfidardo. He currently lives in Valmontone, a small town near Rome where he grew-up.

THE ODEION STRING QUARTET was established as a full-time resident string quartet at the University of the Free State (UFS) in 1991. It is the only resident string quartet at a South African university. The Odeion String Quartet is a flagship of the UFS and symbolises the university’s commitment to the arts. It plays an important strategic role in the development of music for symphony orchestra and in classical music training in the Free State.