Music to defy expectations

BASYA LAYE

Mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital was born in Be’ersheva in 1978. A composer and performer, he started his mandolin studies early and, by age 8, he had joined a youth orchestra.

This aptitude for the instrument led to studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and then in Italy at the Cesare Pollini Conservatory in Padua. Establishing himself as equally comfortable within contemporary repertoire, Avital is perhaps best known for transcribing baroque and classical music that was written for other instruments. His extended repertoire is eclectic, spanning disparate genres, including classical, new music, jazz, world, folk and klezmer. Aside from being the first-ever mandolinist to be nominated for a Grammy in the best instrumental soloist category, Avital won Germany’s ECHO Prize in 2008 for his recording with the David Orlowsky Trio. About to release his second album with Deutsche Grammophon, Avital performs here Jan. 12 at the Playhouse, presented by Vancouver Recital Society.

The mandolin may not be the first instrument one thinks of when thinking of Israel’s Negev Desert community, but there was, in fact, no dearth of mandolin music in Be’ersheva when Avital was a child.

“Mandolin orchestras were no strangers to the amateur musical reality in Israel in those early years,” the Berlin-based Avital told the Independent. “More specifically, from the ’30s to the ’60s, many kibbutzim had a mandolin orchestra or mandolin classes for kids. This was a ‘tradition’ that the early Jewish settlers brought in from their origin countries in Eastern and central Europe, where mandolin orchestras were also very popular (especially in socialist-oriented circles). In the ’70s, mandolin orchestras became less popular in the kibbutz, but more popular in the periphery. That is when my first teacher, Simcha Nathanson, a native of St. Petersburg, founded the Be’ersheva youth mandolin orchestra, which I had the fortune to join 20 years later.”

Referencing the recently established Ger Mandolin Orchestra project, which commemorates the original mandolin orchestra of Ger, or Gora Kalwaria, Poland, that was decimated in the Holocaust (see “A project of remembrance” in the Nov. 22, 2013, issue of the JI), Avital said the place of mandolin music goes far back in Jewish history.

“The Ger project [i]s such a unique moment! Both for the mandolin and for the commemoration of people’s lives before the war,” he said. “The mandolin has always been a popular instrument, and mostly as an amateur and folk instrument (as opposed to a classical, concert-hall type instrument, which is the destiny that I see for it). It’s a matter of fact that the mandolin played a central role also in Jewish musical traditions throughout history, and its sound is very familiar in the klezmer context. If you want to reach far back, you may note also that the very first instrument mentioned in the Bible, the kinor (Genesis 4:21), was almost definitely a plucked string instrument – much closer to the mandolin than the violin, which the word kinor refers to in modern Hebrew....”

Avital has cemented his reputation for what a reporter in Haaretz said is his penchant for doing “everything you never dreamt a mandolin could do.” Prior to his Grammophon discs, Avital released numerous recordings from the worlds of klezmer, new classical and traditional folk. His first album, Bach, released in 2012, is a disc of J.S. Bach concerti and sonatas for violin and harpsichord arranged for mandolin by Avital.

It’s the near infinite versatility of the mandolin that allows Avital to boldly experiment. This penchant for genre switching and genre bending is part of what makes Avital a bright light in the classical landscape. The New York Times has noted his “exquisitely sensitive playing” and “stunning agility,” and his audience seems to welcome the eclecticism.

“People who come to concerts these days are more curious and open-minded then ever before. This fact sets artists like me free to follow their own curiosity and to create new musical experience,” he explained. “I feel privileged that life brought me to play this instrument and to meet the people that have greatly influenced me. I was trained in classical music institutions all my life, and it wasn’t until I met clarinetist Giora Feidman about 10 years ago, when my horizons opened to folk music and improvisation. When I play Bach, I bring in from my experience performing folk music – the ease, the freedom, the importance of the niggun, the melody, of singing; and when I play world music, I feel I always bring the finesse from classical music – finesse of the sounds, of the nuances, of the color and dynamic range and, of course, the chamber music qualities acquired in many concerts played with other musicians.”

He continued, “If you look at the mandolin as one member of a larger family of plucked strings instruments, you realize that members of this family always play the major role in almost all ancient musical traditions in the world: the oud in Arab music, the sitar in Indian music, the Chinese pipa, Japanese koto, bouzouki and saz in Greece and Turkey, the Russian balalaika, the list is endless. So, it’s no surprise that the sound of a plucked string instrument – a mandolin in my case – evokes so many musical traditions, and brings the listener into a rich world of associations. This is probably the quality I like the most about this instrument. As an artist, I enjoy using it like a huge palette of colors to mix and choose from.”

Avital’s VRS concert will feature music from Bach, Yasuo Kuwahara, Maurice Ravel, Manuel de Falla, Béla Bartok, as well his own composition, Kedma. He will be joined by pianist Michael Brown.

“The recital’s program is a bit like an autobiography,” he noted. “Every piece of the program reflects one part of my artistic identity, or my musical path. Bach’s monumental music: this has been always a very present part of my life; Bloch, who symbolizes the connection to my Jewish tradition; De Falla’s Spanish folk songs, which stand for the integration of folkloristic music into concert music; and the Japanese Kuwahara, whose music stands for the highest degree of virtuosity composed originally for the mandolin. Finally, my own piece, Kedma, was born out of an improvisation and formed itself into my first and only original composition. It reflects a lot of my personal journey.”

Collaboration has been a defining aspect of Avital’s career, and he has worked with, among others, the Silk Road Project, violinist Ittai Shapira, soprano Dawn Upshaw, trumpeter and composer Frank London, and Israeli jazz bassist Omer Avital, with whom he created the cross-genre project Avital Meets Avital. They performed together last fall in Berlin.

“Omer and I share similar backgrounds,” Avital said of this collaboration. “We were both born to Moroccan families who immigrated to Israel in the early ’60s; we both grew up in the ’80s, in a very multicultural Israeli society; and we both ended up studying at the same institution, the Jerusalem Music Academy. I was at the classical department and Omer did jazz. The idea of collaborating, bringing each of our own worlds, was born in the academy’s cafeteria many years ago. But it was only last year, at a big music festival in Germany, that we were finally pushed to make time out of our busy solo careers and develop together something completely new. This was an extraordinary experience and I’m so happy that it was documented (you’ll find the Bremen performance on YouTube). We’re now, indeed, thinking of how and when to maintain this unique collaboration. I have personally learned so much working with Omer and the other two members of the band – pianist Omer Klein and percussionist Itamar Doari. It also gave me an opportunity to dig deeper into my own cultural heritage – the music I heard in my childhood.”

Avital’s emotional intensity and energetic playfulness is evident, and to watch him play is to witness someone who truly enjoys performing. A Boston Musical Intelligencer article said this about him: “Avital was electrifying to watch and hear…. [He] takes the listener to the brink of wildest expectation and then leaps over those boundaries.” This joyful spirit emerges from his love of the music but also his respect for his audience, he said.

“Playing music is, of course, a very emotional, intense, energetic experience – how can it be otherwise? When I’m on stage playing a concert, I’m all tuned to the audience. I play for them. Therefore, the energy flows from the stage to the audience but also as much from the audience to the stage. I’m sharing with the audience an experience in real time. This is the true magic of live concerts.”

Avital has been described as an “entrepreneurial musician,” and forging his own path is just part and parcel of his originality.

“As a mandolin player, unlike a violinist or pianist, I had to ‘invent’ my way,” he explained. “While young musicians of more traditional classical instruments might have a clear path they can walk in – repertoire they’re expected to play, competitions that are set, iconic idols to follow – I practically had to invent all that for myself and for my instrument. The lack of classical repertoire for the mandolin, for example, made me rearrange some of the masterpieces written for various instruments to the mandolin, and also commission many new pieces by contemporary composers in order to expand this repertoire for future generations.”

His new album, which is being released on Jan. 17, takes this adventurousness to new heights.

“Between Worlds ... pays a tribute to composers who wrote classical music or ‘concert’ music integrating traditional and folk music,” said Avital. “Bartok, to name one, collected thousands of folk tunes that he had learned from peasant and village people from all around the Balkans, and elaborated them within his own unique musical language into concert music. This was an extremely modern action if you think of its context. Imagine how it felt to sit in a piano recital about a hundred years ago and, after hearing Beethoven and Brahms, suddenly hearing exotic scales and rhythms that belonged till then only to their ancient origins!

“In our days, where all musical cultures of the world are just a click away, we have the right perspective to appreciate this action of innovation, by pieces and composers who have long become ‘classics.’ Same goes for Manuel De Falla’s treatment of Spanish popular music; Villa Lobos in Brazil; Piazzolla, who brought the Argentinian tango into the concert hall. And, of course, Antonin Dvorak, who traveled to New York [at] the end of 19th century with the mission of inventing the classical music of the ‘New World.’ In keeping with their innovative spirit, and making it again modern for us today, we have rearranged all the pieces in the album to instrumentation that even more blurs the distinction between classical music and traditional music. So, expect to hear a lot of rhythm, a lot of colors and an ongoing play of genres.”

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