The New York-based Metropolis Ensemble, led by music director Andrew Cyr, will play Avner Dorman’s Concerto for Mandolin with soloist Avi Avital. The piece has a virtuosic mandolin part and an amalgam of styles including Middle Eastern harmonies, lots of minor seconds, fluttering tremolos, and string bits that occasionally sound like something from a Bernard Herrmann film score. Naxos has just released a CD of Avner Dorman pieces—the mandolin concerto is on it—and is hosting a CD release party there that’s open to the public. At the event, all attendees will get a free CD and there’s a reception and CD signing after the performance. The whole thing is coordinated through No Longer Empty, a non-profit organization that organizes site-specific public art exhibitions in vacated storefronts and properties in New York City. The point is, Avner Dorman, born in 1975, seems to be the real deal, and there’s something rather wonderful about the chance to hear his music for free in the defunct Tower store.

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