Ofer Assaf is an Israeli-born tenor and soprano saxophonist, composer, and educator who has spent nearly three decades building a career that runs from Tel Aviv's big-band scene to New York's jazz-fusion circuit. He attended the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, splitting his time as a student between music and dance, and in 1991 won the Israeli National Competition in Jazz and Contemporary Music. During his subsequent military service he played saxophone with both the Israeli Air Force Orchestra and the IDF Orchestra, and in the mid-1990s he became a member of the Tel Aviv Big Band. He also performed with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra for the city's 3,000th-anniversary celebration concert.

In 1997, Assaf relocated to New York and enrolled in the New School University's Jazz Program, studying with saxophonist Billy Harper, pianist Richie Beirach, and bassist Reggie Workman. He graduated in 2002, and that same year performed at Carnegie Hall alongside Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock as part of the JVC Jazz Festival.

Assaf released his debut album as a leader, Tangible Reality, on Summit Records in 2008: six original compositions plus interpretations of the standards "The Nearness of You" and "Body and Soul," recorded with trumpeter Jim Rotondi, pianists Theo Hill and Klaus Mueller, bassists Don Pate and Essiet Essiet, and drummer Bruce Cox. The album was placed on the Grammy Awards' first-round consideration ballot ("pre-nominated," not a final nomination) in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category for 2009; reviewing it for All About Jazz, Dan McClenaghan praised Assaf for crafting "his own voice, in terms of ensemble sound" while showing "a great respect for the tradition."

Beyond his own leader date, Assaf has built a long-running sideman career centered on keyboardist Adam Holzman (a veteran of Miles Davis's 1980s bands) and the late funk pioneer Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic, Talking Heads). He recorded and toured with the Bernie Worrell Orchestra, appearing on the albums BWO Is Landing (2013) and Prequel (2014), and has been a recurring member of Adam Holzman's fusion group Brave New World, appearing on Truth Decay (2018), The Last Gig (2021), and Zombie Apocalypse (2025) — a working relationship that has continued for close to a decade. Earlier sideman credits include the Latin-jazz group Kamafra's Live (2002) and the smooth-jazz-leaning Leave A Message (2005) by D>Tour, alongside saxophonist David Mann and trumpeter Alex Sipiagin. He is based in New York and continues to perform, record, and teach.

Assaf's playing sits at the crossroads of straight-ahead postbop and jazz-funk fusion. Tangible Reality leans on hard-swinging, tradition-minded postbop, with All About Jazz's Dan McClenaghan singling out the "frenetic drumming" beneath the high-energy original "Kingfisher 51" alongside his readings of jazz standards. His long-standing work with Adam Holzman's Brave New World and the Bernie Worrell Orchestra, by contrast, runs through prog-inflected jazz-rock and funk, reflecting Worrell's Parliament-Funkadelic and Talking Heads pedigree and Holzman's own fusion background from his years with Miles Davis. His training under Billy Harper, Richie Beirach, and Reggie Workman at the New School anchors both sides of that range in a tradition-conscious postbop vocabulary.