

Alon Yavnai at the Punta del Este Jazz Festival, Uruguay. (Photo: Jimmy Baikovicius, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

[Alon Yavnai's jazzprofiles.com profile](https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/il-alon-yavnai)

[r/IsraelJazz](https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelJazz/)

In 2008, an Israeli-born pianist named Alon Yavnai won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album, as part of the Paquito D'Rivera Quintet, for a record called *Funk Tango*. He co-wrote the title track. Ask most jazz fans about him and you'll get a blank look: general reference sites cover the handful of famous names and stop there, and a working pianist with an actual Grammy on his shelf falls straight through the gap.

Yavnai started piano at four, in Israel, and was already accompanying singers by thirteen. He trained at the Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts and the Givatayim Conservatory before Berklee College of Music pulled him to Boston at twenty-two. He won the Great American Jazz Piano Competition outright, and by the early 2000s he'd become the pianist in Paquito D'Rivera's Latin Jazz Quintet, a chair he held for close to seven years.

His 2001 debut as a leader, *D.S. Al Coda* (Whaling City Sound), is a sextet record, and one of the horn players on it is trumpeter [Avishai Cohen](https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/il-avishai-cohen-trumpet). Seven years later, *Travel Notes* (2008, ObliqSound), Yavnai's musical diary of life as a touring player, brought in [Omer Avital](https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/il-omer-avital) on bass and oud. Two records, two collaborators - which is exactly the kind of connective tissue a bare bio misses. Hopefully if you're not familiar with his collaborators you'll explore their profiles right after you're done here.

D'Rivera stayed a constant. Beyond the quintet, Yavnai and D'Rivera built a standing trio with cellist Mark Summer, releasing *The Jazz Chamber Trio* on the audiophile label Chesky Records in 2005, and Yavnai went on to appear on D'Rivera's *Panamericana Suite* (2010), which itself won a Latin Grammy. Elsewhere in the catalog, he backed Nancy Wilson on *Turned to Blue* (2006, itself a Grammy winner for Best Jazz Vocal Album), showed up on Caribbean Jazz Project's *Mosaic* (2006), and, further afield than anything else on his résumé, played on Yo-Yo Ma & Friends' *Songs of Joy & Peace* (2008), a holiday record with James Taylor and Diana Krall on the same tracklist.

His own catalog keeps a geography running through it. *Shir Ahava* (2012) paired him with Germany's NDR Bigband for a 17-piece take on his writing. *Reconnect* (2016) is a duo record with Danish trumpeter Jesper Riis, made after the two met at a music school in Miami twenty-two years earlier, lost touch, and picked the friendship back up in New York. *Dança Das Águas* (2018), credited to Alon & Joca with the NDR Bigband, leans into Brazilian and West African rhythm through his ongoing partnership with percussionist Joca Perpignan. It is the same instinct that named *Travel Notes* what it is: wherever Yavnai has actually been, in Israel, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, ends up on the record.

Where to start listening:

* His official platforms: [Alon Yavnai's Official Site](https://www.ayavnai.com/), [Alon Yavnai's Spotify Page](https://open.spotify.com/artist/7D9DryNCkOO7GzUvhUSIJN)
* *D.S. Al Coda* (2001), the sextet debut with Avishai Cohen on trumpet, on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/album/2xoc0b8vxQvRe0yHm81RSv)
* *Travel Notes* (2008), with Omer Avital on bass and oud, on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/album/1aztEF1SvlueWIijbakbpC)
* *Funk Tango* (2007), the Paquito D'Rivera Quintet record that won Yavnai his Grammy, on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/album/0NmSkMKOIEBy9RvaOHy61w)
* *Reconnect* (2016), the duo record with Jesper Riis, on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/album/0j8qxArMpA3GLBwBMcWZD4)
* Full bio, discography, and sourcing: [Alon Yavnai's jazzprofiles.com profile](https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/il-alon-yavnai)

Alon Yavnai Has a Grammy Award. Most Jazz Fans Have Never Heard of Him.