Avi Avital: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Other than bluegrass virtuosos like Ricky Skaggs, players of the mandolin don’t often get taken very seriously. But a young Israeli musician named Avi Avital is trying to change that. He’s not a bluegrass star; instead, his mandolin sings with the sounds of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ernest Bloch and contemporary composers like Avner Dorman. Avital’s recording of a mandolin concerto by Dorman gave the instrument a little boost in 2010, when Avital became the first mandolinist to be nominated for a Grammy in the Best Instrumental Soloist category. The concerto was an Avital commission: The mandolinist feels strongly about challenging today’s composers “to consider the mandolin as a virtuoso instrument, and use its great sonorities and the immense palette of colors and expressions it can produce.“ You can hear a lot of those colorful sonorities in this Tiny Desk performance. Avital also adheres to the old “necessity is the mother of invention“ axiom. Since mandolin compositions aren’t thick on the ground, he arra