Maayan Smith grew up in Jerusalem and began saxophone studies at age nine, training classically under Prof. Gersh Geller at the Jerusalem Conservatory. From 1998 he was a member of the Jerusalem Saxophone Quartet, and recorded two CDs with the quartet and the larger, eight-piece Jerusalem Saxophone Ensemble in 2004 and 2005, released on the Mishkenot Sha'ananim Music Center label. He earned a Bachelor of Music in classical performance from the Jerusalem Music Academy in 2006, winning scholarships and competitions along the way.

Shortly after graduating, Smith turned from classical performance toward jazz. In 2009 he relocated to Brussels and enrolled at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, earning a Master's degree in Jazz Performance under saxophonists Jeroen Van Herzeele and John Ruocco. In 2013 he won the conservatory's Toots Thielemans Jazz Award, given annually to the school's highest-scoring jazz student, performing with his own quartet at the award concert.

Since settling in Brussels, Smith has built a working career across a wide range of Belgian jazz-scene projects rather than around a single flagship band. He plays tenor saxophone in Heptone Colours, the septet-in-residence at the Heptone jazz club in Ittre, alongside pianist Olivier Collette, bassist Sal La Rocca, drummer Bilou Doneux, reed players Toine Thys and Philippe Laloy, and guitarist Eliott Knuets; the group's self-titled 2022 album mixes jazz standards (Coltrane's "Giant Steps," Jaco Pastorius's "Liberty City," Hendrix's "Little Wing") with originals. He arranged the brass section and played saxophone on Brussels outfit Nu Jazz Project's jazzy hip-hop record Next Step (2019, Ragtime production), recorded tenor saxophone on funk-soul act Man On Fire & The Soul Soldiers' We Will Give You Some Soul (2014), and appears on the Israeli big band Score Man's Part 1 (Nine Orchestral Dances) (2014). He also leads his own Maayan Smith Quartet and has played in the Frank Zappa repertory group Sinister Sister, which performed at the Brussels Jazz Festival at Flagey in January 2018.

Smith's most internationally distributed release is Flight Dream (2018), the debut album of BEAM, a self-described half-Israeli, half-Luxembourgish collective he co-leads with guitarist Eran Har Even (another Israeli-born, Netherlands-based musician), bassist Boris Schmidt, and drummer Niels Engel, with every member contributing compositions. Before his move to Brussels, Smith is also listed on Discogs as an "Appearance" credit on the Israeli jazz-funk/hip-hop group Coolooloosh's Elements of Sound (2008), though this credit is not independently confirmed (see notes.md).

Smith's path runs from the classical saxophone repertoire straight through a formal jazz conservatory education, and his working discography still reflects that range rather than settling into one lane: Heptone Colours plays straight-ahead standards and covers, Nu Jazz Project fuses jazz horns with hip-hop production, Man On Fire & The Soul Soldiers works a funk-soul groove, and BEAM writes original contemporary jazz-fusion material as an international collective. Rather than a single stylistic signature, his career reads as a working Brussels saxophonist's résumé: a player trusted across genres and bandstands by a wide circle of European bandleaders.