AVI AVITAL

Between Worlds Ensemble

Music director: Avi Avital

Mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital leads a new ensemble that challenges the boundaries between classical and folk music. Each project of the Between Worlds Ensemble is dedicated to a different geographical region—the Iberian Peninsula, the south of Italy, the Black Sea, and more to come—and paints a rich musical portrait of that region in bright colours and detailed nuances. Classical composers from each region are played side by side with traditional music that often inspired their work, performed together with renowned folk vocalists and instrumentalists as guest artists.

The Between Worlds Ensemble comprises ten international musicians, whose diverse background and remarkable versatility and curiosity let them venture out of the familiar classical sphere to the rhythms and textures of folk traditions. In creative collaborations with their guest artists, the Ensemble highlights the captivating quality of folk performers as living legacies of ancient art forms. Through classical compositions, elaborate arrangements, and traditional performance, they re-articulate together the particular musical dialect that defines a local region and simultaneously open its borders, investigate its influences, and marvel at its fluidity and reach.

The outcome is a celebration of musical variety: old and new, classical and traditional, local and universal. As audiences enjoy the beauty of the music, they are invited to uncover hidden corners, to make subtle connections, and to re-imagine our potential for being at home in the world.

Avi Avital and the Between Worlds Ensemble collaborate with renowned flamenco cantaora Marina Heredia to create an enticing musical portrait of the Iberian Peninsula. Heredia’s passionate flamenco singing, together with guest flamenco guitarist and percussionist, weaves in and out of works by de Falla, Albéniz, Granados and Lorca — pieces that were conceived through the integration of folklore and classical composition styles.

By playing with different genres, traditions, and performance cultures, the Between Worlds Ensemble sheds new light on these pieces, offering their own fascinating interpretation of the composers' perspectives on musical intersections.

The Ladino lamentations of the Sephardic Jewish community sweep Avital and Heredia into an intimate musical dialogue of roots and cultures, adding another historic layer to the fiery, soulful journey to Iberia.

Program

A major crossroads since ancient times, the area known as the Black Sea has produced a fascinating range of musical styles that make it a natural focal point for the Between Worlds Ensemble. Bordering present-day Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and Georgia—the Black Sea represents both cultural exchange and dramatic oppositions and contrasts. The tension between local and multiethnic identities echoes in the diverse music of the region.

Béla Bartók’s trademark synthesis of progressive classical music and traditional folk is represented here through an insightful new arrangement of three movements from his “Mikrokosmos”, alongside contemporary classical composers from the region, Traditional Crimean Tatar music, Turkish folk melodies and Klezmer with an Odessan stamp—all originate from the teeming mixture of Black Sea cultures. With a special collaboration with the internationally acclaimed Rustavi traditional men’s choir from Georgia, the Between Worlds Ensemble creates an electrifying musical experience that showcases the bursting life force and unique musical universe of this complex and colourful region.

Program

The range of sensibilities, nuances, and influences that have shaped local cultures up and down the Apennine Peninsula is vast, and its folklore is rich and memorable. The Between Worlds Ensemble lands in the south of Italy to explore it and its surrounding musical cultures, in their historical and contemporary significance—from traditional folk, through Neapolitan Baroque and into the present.

Guest singer Alessia Tondo is a leading exponent of folk music and a native of the Apulia region. We will find here the wild Tarantella dance associated in the popular imagination with the aftermath of a venomous spider's bite, as well as variants on the Pizzica, a folk dance that emerged from Salento at the southernmost tip of Apulia. In curated arrangements of traditional Greek songs, we explore the ancient influences between Greece and the south of Italy, still preserved in the spoken Griko dialect.

In his "Viaggio in Italia" (“Journey in Italy”), Sicilian composer Giovanni Sollima creates an eclectic composition that ranges from the Middle Ages to progressive rock, honoring iconic figures from Italian art, literature, and music.

Connecting the dots is Avital’s mandolin. This instrument, synonymous with Italian folklore, has turned in his hands into a classical concert instrument that expresses any and all genres of music, and plays a special role in this program.

Program

On its all-intrumental program, the Between Worlds Ensemble showcases its own musicians, spotlighting their top-tier chamber music making and the radical versatility of each individual player. The Journey gathers select instrumental pieces from the Ensemble’s triptych—'Iberia,' 'Black Sea,' and 'Italy'—offering center stage to the uniquely crafted arrangements of the Ensemble’s composers collaborators: Jonathan Keren, Efrain Oscher, Lev Zhurbin, and David Bruce. Bruce is also the composer of the centerpiece of this program: the four-movement, 'Cut the Rug,' which most accurately represents the multi-layered musical and cultural exploration of our group.

Program

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