Roy Assaf is a jazz pianist and composer born in 1982 in Beersheba, Israel, not to be confused with an unrelated Israeli choreographer or an unrelated actor who share his name. He started at the Tel Aviv Conservatory before moving to Berklee College of Music, and graduated at 23 in 2005, when he moved to New York City. The transition was fast: within weeks of arriving, he was invited onto a 13-city European tour as the pianist for the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars, a band built around James Moody, Jimmy Heath, Paquito D'Rivera, Roy Hargrove, Lewis Nash, Randy Brecker, and Antonio Hart. He has remained a member of the group since, and further calls followed from the Slide Hampton Sextet, the Mingus Big Band, Steve Turre's bands, and the David Sanborn Group, while he completed a master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music in May 2008.

That same stretch of years gave him his first working group. At Manhattan School of Music he met bassist Eddy Khaimovich and drummer Ronen Itzik, two more Israeli transplants who had not known him before New York. Billed as the Roy Assaf & Eddy Khaimovich Quartet, their debut, "Andarta" (2008, Origin Records), added saxophonist Robin Verheyen and, on select tracks, trumpeter Roy Hargrove. The same year, Assaf received the ASCAP Foundation's Young Jazz Composer Award, one of 21 recipients that year in the 18 to 29 age group, alongside the 31st Down Beat Student Award for Outstanding Performance, the 30th Down Beat Student Award for Best Jazz Arrangement, second place in the Charlie Palmieri Memorial Piano Competition, the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute Award, and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Prize for Young Israeli Musicians.

"Augmented Reality" (2011, Daywood Drive Records) reunited him with Itzik alongside Peruvian bassist Jorge Roeder, a trio record built around Middle Eastern, Latin American, and European folk material. In 2012 came his first release billed solely under his own name: "Respect, Vol. 1" on Jazz Legacy Productions, with Reuben Rogers on bass, Greg Hutchinson on drums, and guests Roy Hargrove and saxophonist Eric Alexander. The concept is stated plainly in the running order: ten tracks tied to ten pianists in chronological order, from Count Basie to Danilo Perez, before Assaf closes with two originals of his own, a chosen lineage rather than a standards grab-bag.

In 2013 he formed the Roy Assaf Trio with bassist Raviv Markovitz and drummer Jake Goldbas. Their debut, "Second Row Behind the Painter" (2014, released in the US on One Trick Dog Records), grew out of roughly five hours of material taped like a live performance rather than assembled piecemeal in a studio. Its title traces to a childhood memory: an older blind man who used to sit in front of Assaf during Yom Kippur services in Israel.

The most recent confirmed studio credit found for this profile is 2015's "Time and the River," David Sanborn's reunion with producer and bassist Marcus Miller after fifteen years apart. Assaf plays keyboards and piano across the album, sharing the session with fellow Israeli guitarist Yotam Silberstein. Alongside his own recording career, Assaf has taught internationally across the US, Europe, Japan, South America, and Israel, including master classes at New York City's PS 361 and more than 20 elementary schools in Jersey City, an artist residency at Finland's Imatra International Festival, and teaching work at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

Assaf's playing sits inside the mainstream, post-bop piano tradition, most explicit in "Respect, Vol. 1," his own stated lineage running from Count Basie through Danilo Perez. Reviewers have singled out his touch and restraint, and Spotify's own artist description cites acclaim from pianists Kenny Barron and Jason Moran. His trio and quartet work with Eddy Khaimovich, Ronen Itzik, and Jorge Roeder pulled in Middle Eastern, Latin American, and European folk material well before "world jazz" fusion became a common move for pianists of his generation, a thread that runs through both "Andarta" and "Augmented Reality." His years inside the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars and alongside the Mingus Big Band and Slide Hampton Sextet place him squarely in a working, tradition-facing lineage of sidemen rather than an experimental or avant-garde one.