Shai Maestro
Shai Maestro Trio live at Transition, Tivoli Vredenburg Utrecht, 6 April 2019
Shai Maestro: The Young Pianist Bass Player Avishai Cohen Discovered
Shai Maestro: The Young Pianist Bass Player Avishai Cohen Discovered
If you read our Avishai Cohen Bass player post, here's the next chapter in the evolving story of Israeli Jazz excellence. Around 2007, when Shai Maestro was still a teenager, Cohen heard him play and pulled him straight into his touring trio. That is not a small credit. Cohen has one of the sharpest ears in Israeli jazz, and he did not hand this seat to a name, he handed it to a kid at the piano.
Maestro, a jazz pianist and composer, is now 39, still very much an active Jazzist, and has spent nearly two decades building on that start. His regular group runs with bassist Jorge Roeder and drummers Ziv Ravitz or Ofri Nehemya. Since 2018 he has recorded for ECM Records, the German label known for a spare, exacting standard that not every player gets invited to meet.
His 2021 ECM record "Human" is a good marker of where he landed: ten originals plus a closing cover of Duke Ellington's In A Sentimental Mood, proof he can sit inside the standards tradition, not just orbit it.
His newest record breaks that pattern on purpose. "The Guesthouse," out March 6, 2026 on the Naive label, is his eighth album and his most collaborative yet. It is built around Rumi's poem of the same name, and for the first time Maestro writes lyrics and works electronics into the sound, with guest turns from MARO, Michael Mayo, and Immanuel Wilkins.
Where to start listening:
- His official platforms:
- "Human" (2021, ECM) for the standards-rooted side - sample the closer, In A Sentimental Mood
- "The Guesthouse" (2026) for where he is right now - sample the single Nature Boy
Shai Maestro, live. (Photo: Dirk Neven, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Shai Maestro is an Israeli jazz pianist and composer discovered as a teenager by bassist Avishai Cohen, who pulled him into his touring trio around 2007. Since 2018 he has recorded for ECM Records, with 2021's "Human" rooted in the standards tradition and his 2026 album "The Guesthouse" marking his most collaborative, lyric- and electronics-embracing work yet.