Biography
“Avital’s seemingly effortless virtuosity and quasi-improvisatory flights in this audibly genial collaboration will send you on your way rejoicing” – Gramophone, reviewing Concertos
Music history proved unkind to the classical mandolin, whose popularity declined during the nineteenth century as tastes changed and more powerful orchestral instruments were developed. In recent years, however, Avi Avital has raised its international profile and revitalised its repertoire, moving it from the margins to the mainstream of concert life. “I see it as my mission to fill the historical gap in the mandolin repertoire, so there will be no shortage of good compositions for the instrument in future,” he says.
Applied to everything from daredevil transcriptions of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons to over 100 new commissions by composers such as David Bruce, Anna Clyne, Avner Dorman and Giovanni Sollima, in addition to his own inventive transcriptions and arrangements, Avital’s eloquent artistry combines jaw-dropping virtuosity, scintillating musicianship and expressive intensity. In 2010 he became the first mandolin player ever to be nominated for a classical Grammy® Award, when he was included in the “Best Instrumental Soloist” category for his recording of Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto.
Today, he regularly appears at the world’s major festivals and such prestigious venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Salzburg Mozarteum, Vienna Konzerthaus and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. As well as performing with the world’s leading orchestras, Avital has also forged close partnerships with other artists who share his openness to musical exploration, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, pianist Omer Klein, accordionist Ksenija Sidorova and percussionist Itamar Doari among them. In 2023, he formed the Between Worlds ensemble to explore the folk and classical traditions of different regions of the world. The project began with a residency at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.
Avital signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 2012 and launched his Yellow Label discography soon after with an album of his own arrangements of harpsichord and violin concertos by J.S. Bach. He signalled his commitment to new repertoire with his second DG album, Between Worlds (2014), a survey of works inspired by folk traditions, with music by Bartók, Bloch, Falla, Piazzolla, Tsintsadze and Villa-Lobos.
Released in 2015, Vivaldi presented the eponymous composer’s Mandolin Concerto and transcriptions of other concertos, including “Summer” from The Four Seasons, together with the traditional Venetian song “La biondina in gondoleta”, sung by Juan Diego Flórez. Avital Meets Avital (2017) contains the rich fruits of a creative dialogue between Avi Avital and his namesake the Israeli-American jazz bassist, composer and bandleader Omer Avital. Most of the works recorded were specifically composed for the album, drawing on a range of musical traditions, including those of North Africa, the Balkans and Andalucia.
Avital followed this with Art of the Mandolin, released in 2020. A groundbreaking addition to his discography, this was his first recording to consist entirely of original mandolin works. With music by Vivaldi, Domenico Scarlatti, Beethoven, Henze and Ben-Haim, as well as world premiere recordings of new commissions by David Bruce and Giovanni Sollima, it surveys three centuries of the classical mandolin repertoire, reflecting both its quality and its breadth.
For his next album, released in November 2023 and entitled simply Concertos, Avital was joined by period-instrument ensemble Il Giardino Armonico and its conductor and co-founder Giovanni Antonini. They recorded original concertos for mandolin by Barbella, Paisiello and Hummel, together with Avital’s own adaptations of works by J.S. Bach and Vivaldi. Antonini was the recorder soloist in the Bach and, thanks to technology, Avital played all four parts in the Vivaldi, which won a 2024 OPUS KLASSIK Concerto Recording of the Year award.
His latest recordings document his Between Worlds project, celebrating the folk traditions of three geographical regions and their influence on classical composers past and present. Together with the Between Worlds ensemble and guest artists Marina Heredia, Alessia Tondo and the Georgian choir Ensemble Rustavi, Avital has recorded three EPs – ITALY, IBERIA and BLACK SEA – and an album, Song of the Birds, which features a colourful sequence of music from all three regions. ITALY came out in May 2025 and IBERIA a month later. BLACK SEA will be released on 11 July, and Song of the Birds will follow on 8 August.
Recent highlights of Avital’s schedule include a concert at London’s Cadogan Hall with bandolinist Hamilton de Holanda and the São Paulo Chamber Soloists; the OPUS KLASSIK recital at the Kühlhaus Berlin; a tour of California with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra; a French tour as player-director of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire; a European tour with soprano Nuria Rial and the Venice Baroque Orchestra; and a Yellow Lounge event with pianist Marie Awadis in Chemnitz.
His forthcoming engagements include the world premiere of Fazil Say’s Mandolin Concerto at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival with the Festival Orchestra and Nil Venditti (12/13 July 2025); and music by Vivaldi and Avner Dorman with flautist Andrea Griminelli and the Brussels Chamber Orchestra at the Pietrasanta in Concerto Festival (26 July). Avital and Between Worlds then embark on their Song of the Birds tour, with dates at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival (31 July, 2 & 4 August), Menuhin Festival, Gstaad (5 August), Viva Musica! Festival, Bratislava (8 August), BBC Proms, London (9 September), Enescu Festival, Bucharest (12 September), Bydgoszcz Music Festival (14 September), and Alte Oper Nights, Frankfurt (10/11 October).
Born in 1978 in the desert city of Beersheba (Be’er Sheva) in southern Israel, Avital began playing mandolin at the age of eight and promptly joined the local youth mandolin orchestra, a remarkable ensemble founded by the Russian-born violinist Simcha Nathanson, whose charismatic teaching and use of transcribed violin pieces left an indelible impression on the young Avi. “He taught me music,” he notes. “The instrument to me is not the point.”
After studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, Avital moved to Italy and absorbed lessons about the mandolin’s historic repertoire from Ugo Orlandi at the Cesare Pollini Conservatory in Padua. He soon broke with tradition, however, in search of a personal artistic identity. Encounters with different musical traditions and genres – from bluegrass and jazz to world music – and collaborations with his mentor, the great klezmer clarinettist Giora Feidman, prepared the way for his emergence as a mandolin pioneer. Avital’s progress gathered speed in 2007 when he became the first mandolinist to win Israel’s Aviv Competition (for young musicians on the verge of a professional career), which led to a succession of debut dates at concert halls around the globe.
6/2025