Plucky musician comes to the Bay Area

Like all Israelis, Avi Avital did his duty serving in the Israel Defense Forces. But instead of carrying a rifle, Avital shouldered a mandolin. Eight strings, fully loaded.

"Before the army," he says, "I took the exam [that allows] 20 musicians a year to keep doing their career. I got that status and served the whole time as a musician."

Considering Avital is one of Israel's finest mandolin players, it's no surprise he received the exemption. And while he never held a suspect at fret-point, he has had the privilege of representing Israel at concerts and recitals throughout Europe, Asia and North America.

Avital returns to the Bay Area as a guest performer at the sixth annual San Francisco Festival of the Mandolins on April 23.

Most of the players coming to the festival specialize in bluegrass, jazz, blues or even old-fashioned Italian ballo liscio (think Lady and the Tramp spooling spaghetti in the alleyway).

But Avital, 27, plays classical mandolin, and is most at home with the music of Bach, Vivaldi and Paganini. He's also performed with esteemed conductors like Mstislav Rostropovich, Riccardo Muti and Phillipe Entremont, and premiered new works for the mandolin by noted contemporary composers. And after studying for several years at Italy's Conservatorio Cesare Pollini, he now lives there much of the year.

"Everything in Italy has a strong sense of aesthetics," he says of his adopted home. "It gave me a lot as an artist. In Israel you have a lot of art, but to appreciate it I had to go to Italy."

But Avital remains devoted to the music of his Jewish homeland, especially when it means new work that expands the mandolin repertoire.

"Israeli composers put in the materials you find here," he says by phone from Israel. "Middle Eastern modes and scales, Arab music, this unbelievable mixture of cultures and influences of Jews coming from all over the world."

Avital didn't exactly experience love at first pluck when he first took up the mandolin at age 8. He was merely emulating a mandolin-playing neighbor boy he looked up to. But his mother had wanted him to have something to do after school anyway, so she forced little Avi to take lessons. Little by little he began to excel.

Eventually Avital enrolled in the Jerusalem Music Academy, though mandolin professors were hard to come by there. In fact, his main teacher was a violinist, who had him play the Bach violin sonatas on the mandolin.

The training paid off. He now enjoys an international career, having played with multiple orchestras, ensembles and even klezmer bands.

Not only is Avital a first-rate player, he's also a walking mandolin search engine, reveling in his knowledge of the instrument's history.

"The earliest written parts goes back to the Medici court in the 16th century," he says. "But the written music [for the mandolin] is not the indicator of when the instrument was born. The mandolin existed long before, coming to Europe from Persia."

Today there are many schools and styles of play, as well as a whole family of instruments, from the little mandolino all the way to the stand-up mandobass. Avital has played them all, but prefers his modern copy of a Stradivarius mandolin.

While he's here for the festival, Avital will make a detour to Palo Alto to celebrate Passover with his parents and sisters (the latter are living in the area for now). It will be the first time the whole family has been together in years.

Then it's back on the road.

Avital's concert schedule keeps him traveling much of the year, but he is happy to be a traveling salesman for the art of the mandolin, which he believes is having a renaissance of its own.

"There is high interest in the mandolin," he says. "People are searching for new sounds. The biggest problem is there is no great contemporary repertoire. So with my love of contemporary Israeli music, I decided to put effort into creating new repertoire. That's why I go to the foremost composers in Israel and around the world."

He also makes constant appeals to potential patrons of the arts, seeking funding for his work. It means the world to him, which is why Avital can't help but engage in a little Hebrew word play when reflecting on the meaning of his career.

"In Hebrew, the word 'omanut' means 'art,'" he says. "The word 'emunah' means 'faith,' and 'emun' means 'to practice.' All three have the same root, and all three are intertwined in my life."




San Francisco Festival of the Mandolins takes place 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, April 23, at the Croatian-American Center, 60 Onondaga Ave., S.F. Tickets: $15. Information: (510) 649-0941, or online at www.slavonicweb.org/events.