It can be easy, especially as an American, to associate the mandolin with bluegrass music. But bluegrass is only a recent sliver of the mandolin’s history! Since the 18th-century artists have been composing their souls with mandolins. All over the globe, from Italy to India, the instrument is beloved.
Let’s examine the lives of a few of these international mandolin players. They have similarities: their impeccable skills and living music-filled lives. but also many differences. Their mandolins may express their roots uniquely, but they are mandolin players through and through.
Caterina Lichtenberg / Germany
Perhaps the most well known bowl-back mandolinist, German Caterina Lichtenberg, is as fabulous a teacher as she is a performer.
Lichtenberg is the professor of Classical mandolin/Soprano lute at the illustrious Music Conservatory of Cologne. In the entire world, she is the only professor of this discipline to date. She also teaches classical mandolin online with ArtistWorks.com
Her tremolos are impeccable. So crisp. There is an Italian technique called arpeggio tremolo staccato. It incorporates a fluid tremolo drone with distinct notes plucking a melody. I think of it to the mandolin what fingerstyle is to acoustic guitar. One mandolin may sound like more. Lichtenberg is phenomenal at this.
Here she teaches the method:
Today, she calls both Germany and California home with her husband Mike Marshall. A true powerhouse couple of the mandolin.
Kym Warner / Australia
Both the mandolin player for The Greencards, as well as Robert Earl Keen, Kym is hands down the most famous mandolin player of Australia. Warner’s father was a trailblazer of bluegrass music in Australia, which cajoled Kym’s liking to the genre. The first time Kym’s dad heard Foggy Mountain Breakdown at a record shop he bought the album, then bought a banjo and headed off to an island (actually called Kangaroo Island) to learn the tune. At the time he was playing with a flat pick because he didn’t know about Scrugg’s style finger rolls. Years later he learned from others how Scrugg’s plays with his three fingers. That made a lot more sense for how fast Foggy Mountain Breakdown goes! Needless to say, not much was known about bluegrass in Australia then, yet it was in the blood of father and son.
Although mandolin was not, by a long shot, commonplace Down Under, there was a community. Kym became the star of that community. Four consecutive years he won the Australian National Bluegrass Mandolin Championships. This led Kym to form a band with Carol Young. The two of them later moved to Texas and formed The Greencards with two others. Their name comes from the detail that three of them carried US green cards. Their first album was in the top five Americana radio songs of 2003. Three Grammy nominations and a Billboard #1 Bluegrass album came later. They toured with Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Robert Earl Keen.
When they toured with Robert Earl Keen’s band in 2015, Robert heard Warner’s playing and asked him to join. While The Greencards remains active to this day, Kym found time to play for both.
Kym’s story is that of followed and lived dreams.
Hamilton de Holanda / Brazil
A Brazilian native, Hamilton de Holanda is a spectacular bandolimist. Before you ask why a bandolimist is on a list of the top mandolin players, rest assured that a bandolim, for all intents and purposes, is the same as a mandolin. The difference is that when the Portuguese and Spanish took the mandolin abroad, primarily Brazil and the Philippines, the mandolin became known as bandolim.
By the age of five, de Holanda picked up his first bandolim. A year later he was performing alongside his brother, Fernando César, in their group Dois de Ouro. He has played with many guitarists, trumpet players, saxophonists, you name it. Bossa Nova and choro are his primary music styles, but he truly has no limits. He is a master of improvisation and expanding the bounds of the mandolin. So much in fact, that his mandolin is a custom 10 stringer!
Carlo Aonzo / Italy
The childhood home of Italian, Carlo Aonzo was a mandolin music school, Circolo Mandolinistico G. Verdi. Surrounded by the “mandolin circle”, Aonzo imbibed the spirit of the instrument.
He typically plays a bowl-back mandolin, the design of which dates back to the 16th or 17th century. But, being a lover of the instrument he has an assortment of specimens.
Traveling all over the globe, performing with orchestras, mandolin orchestras and otherwise, Aonzo is an icon of the craft. His expertise has awarded him first-place honors from the “Vivaldi” prize at Venice’s Vittorio Pitzianti National Mandolin Competition to Kansas’s Walnut Valley National Mandolin Contest.
Shuttling the art mandolin further throughout the world, Aonzo established the International Mandolin Academy in 2006. At the Academy, the whole community of mandolins assembles; mandolas, mandolins, octave mandolins, mandocellos, perhaps a mandobass. Together, they perform orchestra music, composed of mandos!
Avi Avital / Israel
Only eight years old, Israeli mandolin artist Avi Avital entered the local Be’er Sheva orchestra. He had shown great promise as a mandolinist from an early age and rose to embody the potential. He studied at Jerusalem Academy of Music and the Cesare Pollini Conservatory of Music in Padua, Italy.
Another orchestral mandolinist, Avital has been a champion of bringing orchestral mandolin back to the limelight after it’s century of obscurity. Awarded a Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist with Ensemble, Avital routinely performs for packed music halls worldwide.
He is best known for interpreting Baroque and international folk music to mandolin. In the spirit of this article, Avital has remarked to NPR how his word travels have exposed him to the wide reach mandolin music has occupied. Nearly every tradition has held mandolin in high regard. The mission of Avital is to portray this to the modern world, with gusto and passion.
I adore his bending of the strings around 00:45 of this video:
Alison Stephens / England
Stephens is an English mandolinist whose career stretched between 1987 and 2010. Inspired by her father, a mandolinist during World War II, Stephens started playing mandolin at the age of seven. Her father even brought his instrument into battle; the invasion of Sicily for example!
Her father would play the mandolin for her when she was young, and she carried this love with her throughout life. Stephens graduated from Trinity College of Music in London, her focus on mandolin. This is no small feat – mandolin was not a popular instrument in England at the time. There were very few teachers because it was not seen as a “serious” instrument. Stephens defied the odds.
At only 17 Stephens was touring the UK, the rest of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South Africa, Australia, and the United States. She has appeared on scores for movies such as Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Queen, The Golden Compass, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, and TV advertisements as well.
In 2008 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer but made a full recovery. For two years she spent her time fundraising for cancer charities and living life as before the disease. Sadly, cancer returned. On October 10th, 2010 Alison Stephens passed away. Her life glowed with 40 years of inspiration for musicians and mandolin players in particular.
U. Srinivas / India
Known as the Mozart of classical Indian music, Srinivas began playing the mandolin at the age of five. Srivinas’s father was also a musician and encouraged his son’s mandolin playing by introducing Srinivas to his guru, Rudraraju Subbaraju. Subbaraju eagerly became Srinivas’s teacher.
The obstacle was that Sabbaraju didn’t know how to play, much less teach, mandolin! It was no problem though. Sabbaraju would hum Carnatic (classical Indian music) to Srinivas, and Srinivas would repeat on mandolin. This is all at the age of six, on an instrument which Cartanic music was never intended!
Srinivas established an entirely new mandolin technique. While acoustic mandolin was how he began, he gravitated towards electric mandolin because it could accomplish the sustained sound that Carnatic music has.
Many western musicians have raved about Srinivas’s talent. Guitarist John McLaughlin told The Indian Times, “Collaborating with him (U.Srinivas) was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and I have played with the greatest”. George Harrison said that his favorite Indian musical piece is Srinivas’s Mandolin Ecstasy.
Although living a very healthy lifestyle, devoid of alcohol, cigarettes, and meat, Srinivas passed away due to complications of a liver transplant in 2014. He was 45 years old. But his Carnatic mandolin style survives today! U. Rajesh, Srinivas’s brother, is a fantastic mandolinist as well and performs Cartanic music as well.
Olga Egorova / Russia
Born 1986 in Moscow Egorova is one of very few mandolinists in her country. But similarly to the rest of the mandolinists who live in sparse mando countries, she has surmounted the odds. All of her life has been music, from primary school to graduating from the Music Academy of Moscow.
Egorova plays many types of mandolins, electric, octave, etc. Plus, uses many interesting techniques while playing them. In particular, she uses a looper pedal to give more layers to her solo performances. She also performs renditions of famous Russian songs adapted to mandolin.
There are multiple groups which Olga is a part of. She plays with guitarist Roman Palmov, Duo Ro, and a bluegrass band called Happy Penguins. While not exactly like American bluegrass, Egorova has coined the term “Moscow bluegrass”.
And so many more…
Never was mandolin a bluegrass-only instrument. It’s sound rings well in so many genres and cultures. Its reach is only expanding! I hope that you learned a lot about the lives of mandolinists all across the globe. As for me, I’m going to put some Cartanic music on the stereo and learn to play along!
MandoZen 