Yair Avidor

Life

Yair Avidor was born in Tel Aviv, where he began classical guitar lessons at age ten before his growing interest in early music drew him to northern Europe. He studied at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen with Stephen Stubbs, held a Fodella Scholarship at Milan’s Civica Scuola di Musica under Paul Beier, and completed a master’s degree at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London studying with Bill Carter and David Miller. Now based in London, Yair Avidor performs on renaissance and baroque lute, early guitars and theorbo, and has provided continuo for the Academy of Ancient Music, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Israeli Opera and Scottish Opera.

Impact

Avidor has expanded the theorbo’s concert repertoire by writing his own transcriptions of French harpsichord works by Forqueray and Duphly for the instrument, alongside championing seventeenth-century English, French and German solo lute music. As a founding member of the Amphion Consort and a continuo player across major British and European period-instrument ensembles, he has helped sustain the pipeline of historically informed performance while bringing cross-genre musical curiosity, including jazz and Indian music influences, into early-music programming.