Mandolinist Avi Avital is “launching a concerto composed just for Instagram,” writes Erin Blakemore at Wednesday’s (7/20) Smithsonian.com. “In his inaugural Instagram post, Avital writes that the mandolin concerto will have five, 15-second movements posted every day this week. Each movement will be posted exclusively on Avital’s Insta at @aviavital with the hashtag #InstaConcerto. Peter Breiner, who composed the concerto, is a Slovak composer, conductor and pianist known for creating unusual arrangements of popular songs. (One of his most popular albums is called ‘Beatles Go Baroque’ and features the Fab Four played in the manner of classic composers like Vivaldi.) … Composing and performing a concerto for a visual medium presents a few challenges—the trickiest of which is Instagram’s own restriction on video length. Since the platform at first only allowed 15-second videos, Breiner and Avital settled on that as the standard length for each movement…. That’s a bit shorter than the norm, to say the least…. So far, Avital has posted three segments of ‘InstaConcerto for Mandolin and Orchestra,’ which he performs with the Kremerata Baltica Chamber Orchestra…. It’s a reminder that Instagram can be a platform for more than just a filtered selfie.”
Posted July 21, 2016
