Last updated September 10, 2026
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Cover art of *Allusions* (2021), Nitsan Kolko's duo album with clarinetist/saxophonist Hillai Govreen. No CC-licensed or public-domain photograph of Kolko could be found; this cover is used as the only available image connected to him, per the site's disclosed album-cover fallback convention. Saved locally as `portrait.jpg`. Album cover art (not a CC-licensed artist photo). Artwork credited to Avi Azizy per the album's own Bandcamp credits. This is an honestly disclosed editorial stand-in, not a free-licensed image. — Retrieved from the album's own Bandcamp page, https://hillaigovreennitsankolko.bandcamp.com/album/allusions, image asset hosted at https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1757741603_10.jpg.
Nitsan Kolko is a pianist, composer and arranger trained at the Israeli Conservatory of Music before studying at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York from 2018 to 2020, graduating with honors under teachers including Sam Yahel, Hal Galper, Buster Williams, Glenn Zaleski, Shai Maestro and Dave Douglas. He has performed at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Jerusalem Jazz Festival, the Red Sea Jazz Festival, and Tel Aviv clubs including Beit Haamudim and Shablul, alongside international sideman dates in the Netherlands, France, Slovakia, Germany and Ukraine.
His duo album Allusions, with clarinetist and saxophonist Hillai Govreen, was released July 1, 2021 — eight original tracks recorded by Yaron Aldema and mixed and mastered by Avri Borochov, described by the two musicians as a spontaneous musical dialogue. The duo followed it with a 2023 single, "Passing Through." In July 2021 he played piano as part of The Kadosh Brothers, a one-off billing at Beit Haamudim, Tel Aviv, with Onn Kadosh on oud, Elay Kadosh on bass and Elamar Kadosh on drums. He runs his own gig-listing site, an actively maintained archive of Tel Aviv and Brooklyn jazz performances, functions as musical director of a gospel choir, and leads a big band. Now Brooklyn-based, he continues to perform regularly at venues including Ornithology Jazz Club and Jazz On Main, and his site lists an announced (as yet unreleased) solo project, Stories Untold, with a release show scheduled for late November 2026.
Kolko's recorded output so far is defined by the Allusions duo — a chamber-scaled, dialogue-driven format for clarinet/saxophone and piano that leaves substantial space for spontaneous interplay, consistent with the two musicians' own description of the project. His training under Sam Yahel and Shai Maestro, both distinctive pianistic voices in contemporary jazz, points toward a post-bop foundation, though his recorded catalogue to date consists entirely of duo work rather than a solo-leader statement.
Verified against the live Discogs API, Bandcamp and Spotify. Discogs artist ID 13573990. He currently has no true solo-leader release — every catalogued recording is jointly billed with Hillai Govreen.
| Year | Title | Label | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Allusions | Self-released | 8 tracks: The Fastest Camel in the East, Mankurt, 25 Hours, The Cave, Sycamore Trees, Long Ago and Far Away, Past Pretences, Memories of a Sea. Recorded by Yaron Aldema; mixed/mastered by Avri Borochov; artwork by Avi Azizy. Released July 1, 2021. Not separately catalogued on Discogs. |
| 2023 | Passing Through | Self-released | Single. |
| Year | Title (Artist) | Label | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Jazziz – Fall 2023 – Women | Jazziz | Track "Mankurt" (from Allusions). 2×CD compilation/sampler. |
Artist ID 7hshpLVCbVORPCKYo59aUm, confirmed directly from his artist page discography (matches Allusions and Passing Through exactly). 138 monthly listeners at time of research.