Shay Zelman is an Israeli jazz drummer, percussionist, bandleader, festival producer, and educator, born July 27, 1966 in Tel Aviv and raised in nearby Holon in a family of Egyptian, Greek, and Polish roots. He wanted a drum kit as a child, but his parents would not allow one into their small Holon apartment, so his first lessons were on guitar. At sixteen he heard Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus, and Max Roach's drumming on that record settled the question for good: Zelman decided, in his own words, to become a jazz drummer "come hell or high water," and his parents eventually relented. He taught himself largely by listening to jazz LPs before formal study at the Rimon School of Music, and an early run of non-jazz teenage gigs earned him the nickname "Boy Wonder from Holon," publicity that landed him a seat in the Roy Crimmins Big Band, led by the British trombonist and, by his own account, a novelty in Israel at the time.

A grant and a "distinguished musician" award sent Zelman to Denmark, where he studied brushwork and the vocabulary of Bebop, Hard Bop, and Swing under the American drummer Ed Thigpen, best known for his years in the Oscar Peterson Trio; he later also studied vibraphone with P.C. Usherovici. A subsequent stint in New York, where his own biography describes playing alongside Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, Larry Willis, and Walter Bishop Jr. (claims carried here as his own long-stated professional biography rather than independently discography-verified credits, see notes.md), reoriented his career around a specific mission: building up Israel's then-nascent jazz scene by bringing name jazz musicians to Israel to perform alongside local players. That mission produced two lasting institutions: he managed the "Hot Jazz at the Tel Aviv Museum" concert series and was one of the founders of the Caesarea Jazz Festival, alongside further production work for the Weizmann Institute's jazz festival. A 2010 photograph from the Tel Aviv Museum series, taken during a New Orleans-jazz program, shows him mid-performance at the kit, smiling; it is the only independently licensed photograph of him found for this profile (see media.md).

Since 2003, Zelman has taught in the Jazz Studies Department of the Israel Conservatory of Music (Shtricker) in Tel Aviv, including its partnership track with the New School in New York, and has led master classes across the country; students who have gone on to their own careers include Itamar Shapiro. Alongside teaching, he has remained one of Tel Aviv's most active session and sideman drummers. Discogs confirms his drum credit, alongside guitarist/oudist Amos Hoffman, on the 3 Cohens' debut album One (2003); on the Damon Brown-Jonathan Gee Quartet's Good Cop Bad Cop (2001, recorded in Tel Aviv), where he shares drum duties with fellow Israeli drummer Yaki Levy behind bassist Yorai Oron; on Ofer Shapira's Two Views (2010), alongside visiting American baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan; and on the sextet session Eddie Henderson & Friends Play the Music of Amit Golan (2012, Minton's Records), a hard-bop tribute album recorded in Tel Aviv after composer and pianist Amit Golan died six months before the planned sessions -- Zelman is one of two credited drummers, alongside trombonist Jonathan Voltzok, bassist Gilad Abro, and guest trumpeter Eddie Henderson, honoring Golan's own compositions.

As a leader, Zelman has recorded under several billings. The Chatsav/Welch/Zelman Trio's Jazz From The Middle To The East, Vol. II - Songs From The White City (2014, Kicha Studios) was reviewed by All About Jazz. His own leader debut, Rhythms and Colors (2019, Lulu Music), is a set of eight originals. During the 2020 pandemic he recorded the informal Rooftop Session on a Ramat Gan rooftop with saxophonist and vocalist Abate Berihun and bassist Shay Hazan. Zelman's main working group is a trio with Abate Berihun and pianist Anat Fort, billed as the Shay Zelman Trio, which has toured internationally, including a November 2018 date at Madrid's Círculo de Bellas Artes. He also leads a quartet that has appeared under different names for different rooms and repertoire, among them a 2024 Jerusalem Jazz Festival debut billed as the Shay Zelman Quartet, paying tribute to the late pianist Cedar Walton with pianist Nitsan Kolko, saxophonist Jonathan Cohen, and bassist Dor Samukha. He is a regular at Tel Aviv jazz rooms such as the Ilana Goor Museum and the Jazz Kissa series, and has led tribute sets to Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus at Tel Aviv's Summertime JazzFest and a sextet date at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in Tel Aviv.

Zelman's playing traces directly back to Max Roach, the drummer who converted him to jazz as a teenager, and to Ed Thigpen, whose brushwork he studied hands-on in Denmark; the vocabulary he names as his own foundation, Bebop, Hard Bop, and Swing, runs through everything from his Cedar Walton tribute quartet (billed by the Jerusalem Jazz Festival as "going back to hard bop") to the hard-bop tribute session for the late Amit Golan. Within that mainstream core he has also worked comfortably across borders: his main working trio pairs him with an Ethiopian saxophonist and an American-trained Israeli pianist, and his own leader album and rooftop session both lean toward a looser, original, small-group sound. Beyond the bandstand, Zelman's influence on Israeli jazz runs through institution-building as much as playing: two of the country's recurring jazz festivals and a generation of Israel Conservatory drum students carry his name as a founder and teacher, not only a performer.