Oleg Timofeyev was born on 12 January 1963 in Moscow. He came from a musical family. He began studying classical guitar in the early 1980s with the Swiss-Russian guitarist Kamill Frauchi. Since 1983 he has performed early music on authentic plucked instruments (lute, guitar). In 1989 he came to the U.S., where he studied with Patrick O’Brien, James Tyler and Hopkinson Smith. He holds an M.A. in Early Music Performance from the University of Southern California (1993) and a Ph.D. in Performance Practice from Duke University (1999).

He is best known for “pioneering work” in the discovery, promotion, interpretation and authentic performance of the repertoire for the 19th- and 20th-century Russian seven-string guitar. He rediscovered and recorded the music of Matvej Pavlov-Azancheev (1888–1963), among the rare composers for the seven-string guitar in the first half of the twentieth century. He recorded The Golden Age of the Russian Guitar (1999). He wrote The Seven-String Guitar in Russia (2023).

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Timofeyev
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7086151