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Boris Plotnikov

was born on July 29, 1984, in Ekaterinburg, Russia, now lives in Moscow. He started to play the harmonica at the age of 16 in 2000. Boris plays both the diatonic and the chromatic, but prefers the diatonic for most kinds of music. His playing is fast and precise, his main attention is on phrasing, timing and articulation, overblow and overdraw is not a problem for him at all. His stage presence and  expression are also second to none.

Boris first taught himself in 2001 using Interactive Blues Harp Workshop (“Thanks to Bertram and Steve!” BP), and in 2003 he took lessons from Mikhail Vladimirov (who was the Jazz champion at the WHF 2009) and Alexander Bratetsky.

His main influences from the harmonica world are Howard Levy (who also gave Boris some private lesson in 2010 and noted his great technique and customizer skills), Jason Ricci, Richard Hunter, John Popper, Chris Michalek and Bart Leczycki. Boris loves all genres of music from Chet Baker’s and John Coltrane’s Jazz, through Jimmy Hendrix to “Nirvana”’s rock to Prodigy and “Rage Against The Machine”.

Boris’ musical taste and abilities are very wide. He is able to adopt his playing all main genres like Jazz, Blues, Folk, Rock, Funk or Classical. Boris already played together with both Jazz big-bands and Classical chamber orchestras. He really likes to experiment with mixing different kinds of music and is very interested in putting his harmonica style into modern music context, like Hip-hop, Trip-hop, Drum’n’bass or Dubstep.

Besides playing, he is an amazing harmonica customizer - he works using a microscope to make his harmonicas much more airtight, allowing to play all overblows and overdraws fluently and without any squealing, and to make them to play with a more prominent articulation.

Boris is a professional harmonica teacher; he has been giving harmonica classes in Sverdlovsk musical college until 2009 and today has many students profiting from his skills.

In 2013 Boris got two prizes in World Harmonica Festival-2013, second place in Blues/Folk diatonic contest and the third place in Jazz/melody diatonic contest and earlier that year he also won at the international jazz-contest "Master-jam fest" in Odessa (Ukraine).

This is what he says about our instruments:

“My favorite harmonicas are SEYDEL1847 SILVER and SAXONY, all with stainless steel reeds. Stainless steel reeds have a bit different response than other materials, but after I got used to them, I find it perfect for playing any style of music, any technical nuances, all articulation, overblows, overdraws at any volume at any speed. I don’t need to worry about tuning stability - with the brass reeds it always made me nervous always to carry a tuning file with me which is thanks god no longer needed….”