Gilad Ronen started on piano at eight, moved to alto saxophone at twelve, and picked up tenor saxophone and guitar the year after that. At fourteen he began formal training in composition and jazz at the Thelma Yellin School of the Arts in Tel Aviv. A Berklee College of Music summer scholarship at sixteen turned into a full scholarship, and he graduated in 2000 with a degree in composition and performance.

From Boston, Ronen moved to Los Angeles, studying composition with Vince Mendoza, Russell Ferrante, and Alan Broadbent. He was then selected as one of six musicians for the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz's Master's fellowship, hosted at the University of Southern California, a judging panel of Terence Blanchard, Herbie Hancock, and Ron Carter choosing the class. During that period he performed and recorded alongside Hancock, vocalist Dianne Reeves, drummer Brian Blade, and bassist Dave Holland, along with film work on productions including Duplex and Raise Your Voice.

Ronen's jazz credentials extend beyond that fellowship. In 2008, he reached the semifinal round of that year's Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall, performing Joe Henderson's "Inner Urge," Matt Dennis' "Everything Happens to Me," and Keith Jarrett's "Oasis." All About Jazz's own coverage of the event singled him out among the twelve semifinalists as "the most original of the twelve competitors," noting that he "began without mouthpiece, blowing into the saxophone as if it were an ancient horn" during the Jarrett piece.

After the Monk Institute, Ronen joined the UK acid-jazz-funk band The Brand New Heavies, touring internationally through the Tokyo Jazz Festival, the JVC Jazz Festival, and the Playboy Jazz Festival, and appearing on television with Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel Live. He left the band and relocated permanently to Israel in 2009.

Since returning, Ronen has built two careers side by side. He is an associate professor in the New School's Tel Aviv jazz program and runs GR Studios, his own recording facility in Ramat Hasharon, where he has become one of the most recorded saxophonists in Israeli musical history, crediting more than 300 recordings for film, television, pop records, and radio. Alongside that session work, he continues to lead his own jazz projects: Unspoken, a sextet built on Mediterranean influences, a quartet with American singer Jesse Palter, and the trio behind his 2014 album Elegy. He released his solo debut, Fractions of Light, in 2011, and a nine-piece ensemble record, Reflections, in 2023.

Since 2022, Ronen has also been the constant producer, co-composer, and arranger behind bassist Yosef Gutman Levitt's catalog on Soul Song Records, credited on reeds across Upside Down Mountain (2022), Melodies of Light (2023), Unity (2024), and Shir Yedidot (2025).

Ronen's own description of his range, hardcore post-bop jazz on one end, funk and Middle Eastern music on the other, is borne out by the record. His Monk Institute training and his documented performance of Joe Henderson and Keith Jarrett repertoire sit alongside a long, prolific career as a session saxophonist for Israeli film, television, and pop records, and a formative stretch touring with an acid-jazz-funk band rather than a straight-ahead jazz group. His own leader albums lean toward fusion: Fractions of Light blends Middle Eastern modes with electric textures, and Elegy mixes jazz, jazz fusion, jazz-funk, and world music across a single suite. His most consistently jazz-rooted work in recent years has come as a collaborator, producing and arranging Yosef Gutman Levitt's spiritual-jazz catalog and leading his own working groups, Unspoken and the Jesse Palter quartet.