Biography

The mandolin has always changed its shape, its form, its tuning. And it has so much depth, so many layers, and also a lot of different sounds and dynamics and colors that are still not very developed. The discovering element is very strong.

When I was a teenager I had my rock phase. It was the '90s and the news coming from Seattle - grunge music and Nirvana - was all I was listening to when I was in high school. So I started playing the drums. That was my favorite instrument in high school. I played the mandolin and I went to classical lessons, and then I had my rock band and played the drums. So my very little experience a s a teenager with performing music had me paying attention to terms like 'groove' and 'drive' that are not usually taught in the music academy - with classical music. That might have given me something when I play a rhythmical movement from Vivaldi or Bach.

[on early years in Israel] You're growing up in a very multicultural environment. So I was influenced not only by Arabic music, which was familiar to me locally, but also by the ancient Moroccan Jewish liturgical tradition. That's what I was hearing all through my childhood. But, of course, some of the neighbors were from Iraq, and another friend - his parents were Germany - and another family was French. Israel is a society that is constructed out of people from very different cultures - and very different musical cultures as well. The whole environment is very plural; it's very rich. All of this, I am sure, has influenced my natural curiosity toward different t genres of music.

[on his concert program] It's kind of a panorama of my own artistic identity, if you will, or a kind of autobiography. I am myself, in 2014, dealing with the same kind of duality, with the same kind of complex identity as an artist performing both classical music and folk music.