Deutsche Grammophon Signs Avi Avital

We are pleased to hear that Metropolis artist Avi Avital will be signed in an exclusive recording agreement with Deutsche Grammophon as the first mandolinist to be signed by the label. The complete press release follows below.

Recognized by the New York Times for his “exquisitely sensitive playing” and “stunning agility”, Grammy®-nominated mandolinist Avi Avital is one of the most exciting young musicians on today’s scene — deeply committed to building a fresh legacy for the mandolin through virtuosic performance and refreshing new repertoire.

Israeli-born Avi Avital has won many competitions and received awards including Germany’s Echo Award — and is the first mandolin player to receive a classical Grammy® nomination for “Best Instrumental Soloist Performance” in 2010.

Avital’s debut Deutsche Grammophon recording will be an all-Bach album — including transcriptions of concertos for harpsichord and violin in arrangements for mandolin and orchestra — with Kammerakademie Potsdam.

Michael Lang, President of Deutsche Grammophon, says: “Avi Avital is a remarkable virtuoso, completely at home in his instrument’s traditional repertoire, but also an extraordinarily communicative pioneer of new music. We are very pleased to welcome him to the Deutsche Grammophon family.”

On signing the contract Avi Avital remarked: “I am honored to join a label which has recorded so many legendary instrumentalists — and I look forward to bringing traditional and contemporary music for mandolin to audiences around the world — starting with the greatest traditional-modernist of all, J. S. Bach!”

Grounded in his instrument’s Baroque tradition, Avi Avital’s performances regularly include concertos by Vivaldi, Paisiello, and Bach — as well as works by many contemporary composers, including Avner Dorman, David Bruce, and Josef Bardanashvili. His 2011 concert dates have included appearances in Germany, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA — with dates scheduled in Germany, France, UK, China, and Taiwan.

Avi Avital is internationally regarded for performances at venues including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Wigmore Hall in London, and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. He has also been featured at the Tanglewood, Lucerne, Spoleto, and Ravenna summer music festivals.

“Avital has the gift of transforming the seemingly impossible into reality. His magical fingers arrange, shape, and twist the melodious phrases so evocatively that they take on a vocal quality, sounding even more vibrant than the music many violinists or cellists coax from their instruments.” (Jesko Schulze-Reimpell, Donaukurier)

“Avital’s playing, which can be defined as ‘everything you never dreamt a mandolin could do’, was truly breathtaking in virtuosity and dedication.” (Noam Ben Ze’ev, Haaretz Daily)

Chamber Musician Today: Grammy Party

Ilona Oltuski of

GetClassical.org

shares in the excitement of Metropolis Ensemble’s Dec. 16 Grammy Nomination Party at (le) Poisson Rouge.

“It is highly unlikely that anybody in the audience that evening will ever think of the humble mandolin the way they may have thought about it before hearing Avital play; he certainly changed my appreciation for it tremendously.”

Click HERE for the full report at ChamberMusicianToday.com

Manhattan Users Guide: Grammy Party

“Could the mandolin become your new favorite instrument? It actually could, after hearing Avi Avital play it. Metropolis Ensemble, one of the most exciting  things to happen to classical music in the city, with Mr. Avital as soloist, has snagged a Grammy nomination for their CD of Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto. Celebrate at Le Poisson Rouge, tonight, 8pm, free.”

Link to Post

Sequenza 21: Grammy Nomination Party

Just got a note from Andrew Cyr inviting Sequenza 21 readers (and maybe some other less distinguished people) to a free party at Le Possion Rouge tomorrow night to celebrate the Metropolis Ensemble’s Grammy nomination for its Naxos recording of Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto (Avi Avital (soloist) and Andrew Cyr (conductor) with Metropolis Ensemble). Avi, Andrew and the Metropolis crew will perform a few sets during the evening, including the Mandolin Concerto and, maybe, Andrew says, even “a Balkan music jam.” Not only is admission free but the first two drinks are on the house. The party start @7 and lasts until everyone goes home. What’s not to like?

The Red Possum (as I like to call it) is located at 158 Bleecker Street (a sacred place for those of us old to have caught Thelonious Monk on stage there in a different lifetime.)

Link to Post

Sequenza 21: Dorman’s Concerti on Naxos

On the second Naxos CD devoted to the music of  Avner Dorman, concerti take center stage. At first blush, the composer seems to display a palpable streak of traditionalism. Triadic language abounds in his works and he makes many tips of the hat to Baroque music and neoclassicism. But there’s much more beneath this attractive, if familiar, surface. Dorman is also interested in uncovering some of the undiscovered potential of the concerto, exploring its capacity for different narrative arcs and recasting the genre with some unusual protagonists.

Indeed, it was for a work with an unlikely soloist, the Mandolin Concerto, written in 2006 for Avi Avital, that the disc has received the most attention. Avital’s incisive and nuanced performance has garnered a Grammy nomination. The Mandolin Concerto itself is one of the most adventurous works Dorman has yet composed. Its explorations of many timbres, orchestral effects, and myriad shifts of tempo & demeanor make it a dazzlingly mercurial and potent essay.

There’s more on the CD to recommend as well. The Metropolis Ensemble, with a passel of soloists in concertino tow, sparkle in the Concerto Grosso (2003).The work features virtuosic string writing and cinematic sweep. Indeed, here Dorman displays a fluency of orchestration that in places reminds one of John Corigliano, his teacher during doctoral studies at Juilliard.

One would be forgiven if they assumed going in that a Piccolo Concerto would be a piercing prospect and too limited a palette to work satisfactorily. I’m still not convinced that this is a genre that requires a plethora of options, but soloist Mindy Kaufman’s rendering of the Dorman concerto for the instrument reveals striking versatility. The piece itself combines jazzy rhythms, neo-Baroque signatures, and resonances of the pipes and whistles found in a variety of folk music traditions.

Written when he was just 20 years of age, Dorman’s Piano Concerto in A Major is a splashy technicolor work that embraces virtuosic showmanship, combining a prevailingly Neo-romantic aesthetic with occasional post-minimal ostinati. Pianist Eliran Avni captures the concerto’s spirit, performing its often dizzyingly paced passagework and cadenzas with pizzazz. While no one will mistake it for the mature voice found in the Mandolin Concerto, the youthful exuberance of the Piano Concerto is frequently charming.

Link to Article

Washington Post: The Grammy Nobody Knows

From Anne Midgette’s article The Grammy nobody knowson 12/7/10:

In the wake of the announcements of the Grammy nominations last week, two Los Angeles Times bloggers ran a post observing that “the Recording Academy is so much more eager to reward commercial hits than the motion picture academy.” The statement can be debated, but one thing is certain: the authors weren’t looking at this year’s classical music nominations when they wrote it.

We’ve heard a lot about how the record industry isn’t dying because there are so many new recordings – more than anybody can listen to. This year’s Grammy nominations in classical music appear to show the results of this embarrassment of riches: a sampling of recordings so wide-ranging as to appear nearly random. It’s often said that the Grammy voters go for names they recognize, but the nominations this year may curb that tendency by not offering much name recognition at all. Works by the composers Steven Mackey and Michael Daugherty were both nominated for Best Classical Album; the five nominated operas were not by Verdi or Wagner but by Berg, Hasse, Saariaho, Shchedrin, and Sir Arthur Sullivan; and Mitsuko Uchida was the lone big name in a category – Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra) – that included a mandolin concerto by Avner Dorman played by Avi Avital, Eliesha Nelson playing a viola concerto by Quincy Porter, and Joseph Banowetz performing a piano concerto by Paul Kletzki. No MTT (or a Hilary Hahn) in sight.

Click for full article.

Los Angeles Times: Grammy Awards Nomination

Early Thursday morning, Dec. 2,  David Ng of the Los Angeles Times reported on the nominees for the 53rd Grammy awards, including your very own Metropolis Ensemble: Excerpt:

“Dorman’s "Mandolin Concerto” was nominated for instrumental soloist performance with orchestra. The L.A. composer said that he wrote the 15-minute piece specifically for mandolin performer Avi Avital, who performed the concerto with the New York-based Metropolis Ensemble. “I wrote it using Middle Eastern sounds and a lot of North African scales and rhythms,” said Dorman in a phone interview.“

For full article click here.

Press Release: Metropolis Ensemble Celebrates Launch of First International Studio Recording

Free Concert, Reception, and CD signing Monday, February 1, 7:30pm at the former Tower Records - Avner Dorman: Concertos for Mandolin, Piccolo, Piano and Concerto Grosso released January 26 on NAXOS American Classics

New York, NY - The imaginative, up-and-coming chamber orchestra, Metropolis Ensemble, will celebrate its first studio album, Avner Dorman: Concertos for Mandolin, Piccolo, Piano and Concerto Grosso, with a free concert, reception, and CD signing on February 1 at 7:30pm. The event will feature a performance of Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto (string sextet version) by renowned mandolinist Avi Avital and members of Metropolis Ensemble. All attendees will receive a free copy of the new CD and are invited to a CD signing and reception with artists from Metropolis Ensemble. The event is presented in association with, No Longer Empty, a non-profit organization that organizes site-specific public art exhibitions in vacated storefronts and properties in New York City, located in the former Tower Records on Broadway and East 4th Street.

Produced by Grammy-winning producer David Frost, the album contains the complete chamber orchestra concerti by award-winning Israeli composer Avner Dorman. In addition to Dorman’s 2006 Concerto for Mandolin, the album also features three world premiere recordings: the 2001 Piccolo Concerto, with piccolo soloist Mindy Kaufman and pianist Eliran Avni; Concerto Grosso (2003) with Arnaud Sussmann and Lily Francis, violins; Eric Nowlin, viola; Michal Korman, cello; and Aya Hamada, harpsichord; and the composer’s 1995 Piano Concerto, a work he penned when he was only nineteen years old, also featuring pianist Eliran Avni. Metropolis Ensemble was the first professional orchestra to perform Dorman’s music in the United States.

Metropolis Ensemble is a professional chamber orchestra and ensemble based in New York City. Dedicated to emerging composers and performers, Metropolis Ensemble has quickly established a reputation for presenting “new music played with the same kind of panache and bravura we usually experience only in performances of standard repertoire” (Esa-Pekka Salonen).

The dynamic ensemble, comprised of the finest young artists now performing, is led by Music Director Andrew Cyr. Cyr is a distinctive new voice in the growing contemporary classical music scene. His enthusiasm for connecting musicians and composers of the next generation to today’s audiences led him to create Metropolis Ensemble in 2006.

Metropolis Ensemble commissions, premieres and records new works from the freshest voices in classical composition, including Timothy Andres, David Bruce, Anna Clyne, Jakub Ciupinski, Avner Dorman, Ryan Francis, Vivian Fung, Ryan Gallagher, Erin Gee, Raymond Lustig, Ricardo Romaneiro, David Schiff, Adam Schoenberg, Cristina Spinei, and Michael Ward-Bergeman. Since its formation in 2006, Metropolis Ensemble has performed to capacity crowds and has premiered and commissioned over 24 new works.

Avner Dorman has quickly risen to become one of Israel’s most successful and renowned composers. At the age of 25, he became the youngest composer to win Israel’s prestigious Prime Minister’s Award and that same year he was awarded the Golden Feather Award from ACUM (the Israeli Society of Composers and Publishers). Since coming to the United States, Dorman has received several international awards from ASCAP, ACUM, and the Asian Composers League.

Dorman’s unique approach to rhythm and timbre has inspired some of the world’s leading conductors, including Zubin Mehta, Marin Alsop, Asher Fisch, and Simone Young to bring his music to international audiences in performances with The New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestras.

Dorman’s fresh, spontaneous style lends itself well to the screen and he has written for film, notably Nitzan Aviram’s award-winning film Son. His music is exclusively published by G. Schirmer, Inc. and is available on NAXOS, the world’s leading classical music label. Dorman holds a Doctorate from the Juilliard School.

The former Tower Records is located at 15 East 4th Street at Broadway. To RSVP for reserved press seating or to request a review copy of the CD please contact:

Nate Bachhuber
ph: 917.763.9396
e: press@metropolisensemble.org