Avi Avital

Born in 1978 in Be’er Sheva in southern Israel, Avi Avital learned to play the mandolin at the age of eight and soon joined the mandolin youth orchestra directed by his teacher, Simcha Nathanson. He later studied at the Jerusalem Music Academy and at the Conservatorio Cesare Pollini in Padua. In 2007, he became the first mandolinist to win the Aviv Competitions. Avital is now considered a leading ambassador for his instrument. He has commissioned more than 100 new works for the mandolin. Jennifer Higdon, for example, composed a mandolin concerto for him, which he premiered in 2021 with the Munich Philharmonic under Krzysztof Urbański; Giovanni Sollima created a new solo concerto for him as well, which was unveiled in 2020 with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI Torino. In the 2021-22 season, Avital made a guest appearance with Ensemble Arcangelo at London’s Wigmore Hall and gave concerts with Il Giardino Armonico, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He has worked with such conductors as Giovanni Antonini, Jonathan Cohen, Ton Koopman, Zubin Mehta, Kent
Nagano, and Omer Meir Wellber. Avi Avital also devotes himself to projects that cross genres between Baroque, modern, klezmer, jazz, and improvisation, which he undertakes in collaboration with accordionist Ksenija Sidorova, keyboard virtuosos Mahan Esfahani and Kristian Bezuidenhout, jazz pianist Omer Klein, countertenor Andreas Scholl, the Dover and Danish String Quartets, actress Martina Gedeck, and the Georgian puppet theater Budrugana Gagra. He has been a Portrait Artist at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Brussels’ BOZAR, and Dortmund’s Konzerthaus; he also performs at the festivals in Salzburg, Aspen, Tanglewood, Spoleto, Ravenna, and Verbier. An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, he has released six albums. Avi Avital plays on a mandolin made by the Israeli luthier Arik Kerman.

July 2022