Home » Jazz Musicians » Ofri Nehemya
Israeli drummer Ofri Nehemya, has marked himself as one of the most prominent Israeli drummers in the global jazz scene, collaborating with world wide known artists including Avishai Cohen (bass), Ben Wendel, Shai Maestro, Omer Avital, Aaron Goldberg, Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Gilad Hekselman, Eli Degibri and many others.
Ofri was born on January 10th, 1994 in Givatayim, Israel, to a musical family; his father is a drummer and his mother is a singer. Since a very young age, when music was all around, Ofri exposed to different kinds of music including Rock, Pop, Fusion and more. Around the age of 3, he picked up the drumsticks for the first time, playing simple grooves only a few months later. From the age of 8 Ofri was taught by his father for the next 4 years, playing mostly fusion music. In the age of 12, Ofri started taking piano lessons - Classical and jazz, that gave him the basics of harmony and composition.3 years later, at the age of 15, Ofri started his studies at Thelma-Yellin High school's Jazz department. From that point he was mostly playing jazz music. In high school Ofri started studying arrangment, musicianship and jazz history. At the same time, he was playing in the department's jazz combos and in the high school's big-band.The pick came in the age of 16 when Ofri started playing with some of the leading jazz musicains in Israel as Erez Barnoy, Daniel Zamir, Ofer Ganor, Omri Mor, Amit Friedman, Amos Hoffman and many others.In the age of 17 Ofri met the worldwide known Israeli saxophone player Eli Degibri for the first time, and after a while started playing with his quartet, also sharing the stage with worldwide known jazz musicians as Aaron Goldberg and Reuben Rogers. In the age of 19, Ofri started playing with the well known Israeli bass player Avishai Cohen, touring with him for 1 year all over the world. Later on, Ofri moved to NY and joined the band of NY based bass player Omer Avital, recording numerus albums with his band and touring all over the world. In late 2017, Ofri joined Shai Maestro's band, touring and recording including two albums for ECM records. Ofri is leading his own band 'Ofri Nehemya Quartet' as well as being a major part of the collective GTO trio.
Ofri NehemyaDrums
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by Mike Jurkovic
It is quite rare in a culture and society driven by autocrats, hits, likes, blogs and podcasts, that recordings as ethereal, yet born of the ageless earth, as Melodies of Light come around to release us from the daily ugly. Spontaneous music of this hypnotic, mysterious beauty and elusive grace give us pause to reflect on where we are, individually and collectively, and to seek a better way. It haunts. It comes at the listener from some timeless ...
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by Jerome Wilson
Yosef Gutman Levitt's acoustic bass guitar serves as the lead instrument on this album. The music he plays with his trio here is full of simple melodic beauty and draws from several folk traditions. This work has a sparse, contemplative joy which bears kinship to the recordings of Ralph Towner. Levitt shows an eloquent command of his instrument, running down insistent folkish melodies alongside Omri Mor's sympathetic piano and Ofri Nehemya's basic drum rhythms on “Wedding Song" and ...
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by Mike Jurkovic
That pianist Shai Maestro dreams music is an understatement: With an intense romanticist's heart, he also plays in said dream state. And it is re-affirming to know that, after the hellish year the world has been dragged kicking through, that we can all dream too. Human dreams broadly with sunrises, sunsets and all the vulnerability in-between. Amid his steadfast and quick-witted rhythm section-- drummer and fellow Israeli Ofri Nehemya and Peruvian bassist Jorge Roede--Maestro adds the equally impassioned ...
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by Chris May
After paying his dues with Avishai Cohen, with whose Trio he recorded four well received albums, pianist Shai Maestro cut loose on his own, debuting with Shai Maestro Trio (Laborie) in 2013. Human is Maestro's sixth own-name album and his second on ECM, followingThe Dream Thief in 2018. The new disc is elegant, expansive, emotionally charged and beautiful. It contains ten Maestro originals and one cover, a playful version Duke Ellington's “In A Sentimental Mood." This time ...
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by Edward Blanco
Israeli bassist and composer Omer Avital and his group Qantar, offer their second album, New York Paradox, producing a musical sound in a unique, splashy and audacious style which is quite riveting. The uniqueness here extends to the members of this quintet who have formed a special bond which is quite evident when they are performing. All five players are Israeli-born and live in the Bed-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. For Avital, this is his twentieth-plus recording as leader ...
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by Fiona Ord-Shrimpton
The world in its collective viral neurosis is in a cold sweat. What to do? Store shelves are empty, hands have never been cleaner, and if all goes wrong, salaries may soon rise for those who will work. In these trying times, some days you simply must “Avital"—Omer Avital understands this. Thanks to his latest album, New York Paradox , you can, that is you can eavesdrop on the newly broken horizons made through the “rhythmic and harmonic vocabularies underpinning ...
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