Last updated September 10, 2026
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Album cover art for *Symptoms* (feat. Gil Livni), a duo album led by Kobi Salomon. Not CC-licensed — used under the site's album-cover fallback convention, disclosed here rather than presented as freely licensed. — Apple Music catalog artwork, retrieved via the iTunes Search API for "Symptoms (feat. Gil Livni)" by Kobi Salomon.
Kobi Salomon began music at five with private clarinet study and came up through Jaffa youth-orchestra jazz and Dixieland ensembles, placing third in a Jazz Player competition after training at the Rimon School of Music in Israel. He earned a BA in Jazz Performance with honors from the City College of New York around 2005, and spent the following years working the New York club circuit — Fat Cat, Smalls, Cornelia Street Café — while also performing multiple times at the Israeli ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C. He returned to Israel in 2008.
Since then he has led a Benny Goodman tribute ensemble and the swing group "Strings of Swing," performed at the Shfayim, Eilat and Jerusalem jazz festivals, and worked alongside Israeli mainstream artists Yehoram Gaon and Dudu Fisher outside the jazz side of his career. He teaches widely: he directs the music program at Herzliya High School, teaches at the Striker Conservatory, serves as an examiner for the Sharett Excellence Foundation, and since 2023 has headed the jazz department at the Israeli Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv. He has also worked as a sideman on other artists' recordings, including 1998 sessions with Inbal Perlmutter and a Hebrew-song tribute compilation, a 2004 album by the Yakir Ben-Hur Quintet/Sextet, and a 2014 release by Eyal Vilner collaborator Yaniv Kerem.
His own recordings as leader — "Strings of Swing," "Elegance" and a duo album, "Symptoms," credited "feat. Gil Livni" — do not appear on his Discogs artist page, which lists only his earlier sideman credits; they are documented instead through Apple Music and Spotify. He also appears as a sideman on "Focused," a track by the Roy Oliel Sextet, alongside Assaf Hakimi, Niv Toar, Hagai Amir and Shay Maoz.
Salomon's career runs on two distinct tracks: a swing- and Dixieland-rooted performing career, dating to childhood ensembles and centered now on his Benny Goodman tribute group and "Strings of Swing," and an institutional teaching career that has grown into a department headship. A significant instrument correction is worth noting here: some secondary listings and roster references describe him as a guitarist, but every primary and biographical source found — his own site, Discogs, and a Hebrew-language jazz venue biography — describes him consistently as a clarinetist and saxophonist, with no guitar credit anywhere.
Verified against the live Discogs API (artist ID 4689658) and against his Spotify artist page (5D3FJroCQxYzrjetcNJ8Q7), which together tell two different, non-overlapping parts of his story: Discogs holds only early sideman "Appearance" credits, while his own leader releases exist only on Spotify (and, for at least one, via the Artlist production-music library).
| Album Title | Leader/Artist | Year | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| הקלטות אחרונות | Inbal Perlmutter (ענבל פרלמוטר) | 1998 | Appearance | Label/catalog number not listed on Discogs. |
| עבודה עברית: מחווה לחמישים שנות יצירה מקורית | Various Artists | 1998 | Appearance | A 50th-anniversary tribute compilation of Hebrew song; label/catalog number not listed. |
| A Sunny Day | Yakir Ben-Hur Quintet/Sextet | 2004 | Appearance | Label HiBadela Records, CD album; catalog number not listed. |
| Sand In My Eyes | Yaniv Kerem | 2014 | Appearance | Not On Label, CD album; catalog number not listed. |
| Album/Release Title | Label | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Strings of Swing | Not listed | His swing ensemble's album; not on Discogs. |
| Elegance (feat. Ezequiel Jait) — EP | Artlist Classics | Released via Artlist, a royalty-free/production-music library — a different commercial context from a standard jazz-label release. |
| "I'll Remember April" (single) | Not listed | |
| "Memories of You" (single) | Not listed | |
| "My Shining Hour" (single) | Not listed | |
| Symptoms (feat. Gil Livni) | Not listed | Confirmed via Apple Music; cover art used as this profile's fallback portrait. Not on Discogs. |
| Track Title | Leader | Personnel | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Focused" | Roy Oliel Sextet | Niv Toar, Hagai Amir, Kobi Salomon, Shay Maoz, Assaf Hakimi | Confirmed via Apple Music search; not on Discogs. "Roy Oliel" corresponds to "Roey Uliel," named as a collaborator in Salomon's own biography. |
His own most substantial output as a leader — "Strings of Swing," "Elegance" and "Symptoms" — is entirely absent from his Discogs artist page, which stops at 2014 and lists only sideman appearances. This is a real, documented gap rather than an oversight in this research: the Discogs page was checked directly and confirmed not to list any of his own releases. Apple Music's search catalog recovered both the leader releases and the previously-undocumented "Focused" sideman credit.