Avi Avital is an Israeli virtuoso mandolinist known for his passionate interpretations of Baroque, contemporary, and folk music. Also a dedicated advocate for the instrument, his life goal is to expand the mandolin’s repertoire, develop its technique, and challenge its preconceived limitations. He was born in Be'er Sheva, Israel, in 1978, and he started learning the mandolin at eight years old. Avital soon began performing with the local mandolin youth orchestra led by Simcha Nathanson, who was a trained violinist and self-taught on the mandolin. Later, Avital attended the Jerusalem Academy of Music, followed by studies with Hugo Orlandi in Padua at the Cesare Pollini Conservatory. Upon recognizing the need to expand the repertoire available for the mandolin, he started composing and arranging, and in 2002 he began commissioning concertos and chamber music that featured the mandolin. Two years later, he started collaborations with klezmer clarinetist Giora Feidman, who also acted as a mentor to the young mandolinist. He won the Doris and Mori Arkin Prize at the 2007 Aviv competition in Israel, which provided exposure, recognition, and debuts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, and other major venues. Avital’s 2010 recording of Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto earned him a Grammy Award nomination in the category of Best Instrumental Soloist. Although he didn’t win, it led to a recording contract with the Deutsche Grammophon label in 2012, and the release of his debut album Bach, which featured Avital’s arrangements of Bach’s violin concertos for mandolin and orchestra. His son Hillel was born in 2013, and he released the album Between Worlds in 2014, which contained several original arrangements and works by composers such as Ora Bat Chaim, Sulkhan Tsintsadze, and Vittorio Monti. His third album, Vivaldi, was released on Deutsche Grammophon in 2015, followed by a jazz collaboration with bassist Omer Avital, Avital Meets Avital, from 2017. He returned to the classical genre in 2019 with The North Wind Was a Woman - Chamber Works by David Bruce. Avital served a residency at the Boulez Sall in Berlin in 2022, where he rejoined the Between Worlds Ensemble for a series of three concerts that were focused on the regional sounds of the Iberian Peninsula, the Black Sea, and Italy. He also performed debuts of concertos he commissioned from Jennifer Higdon, Anna Clyne, and Giovanni Sollima, and he toured with Olga Pashchenko, Omer Klein, and several others. His 2023 release Concertos was one of the best-selling classical albums of the year, and he continues to be very active on-stage and in the studio. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi
