Stav Achai is an Israeli jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who records and performs under the mononym "Stav." Press coverage from March 2022 described her as 30 years old, placing her birth year around 1991-92; her exact birth date and birthplace are not independently confirmed (see notes.md). She began classical piano training at age six under her mother, a pianist and piano teacher, while her father, a wind-instrument player who died around 2020, kept an eclectic record collection spanning classical, jazz, Indian music, and 1970s rock that shaped her early listening. She attended the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, developed as a jazz musician there, served as a musician during her IDF military service, and afterward continued her jazz training at the New School in New York.

Before establishing her own project, Achai worked as the keyboardist for Jane Bordeaux, a Tel Aviv indie folk and country-pop band formed in 2012 and known for its vintage sound (alongside vocalist Doron Talmon, guitarist Mati Gilad, drummer Yoav Arbel, and guitarist Rami Osserwasser). She has since led her own jazz quartet, with Daniel Harlev (bass, also her partner), Shahar Haziza (drums), and Roi Avivi (electric guitar), releasing two albums as "Stav": the debut Plastic Cocoon (Speak Thru, October 2020), a five-track release blending jazz, classical, rock, and African influences, and Tears In Colours (2024), a nine-track full-length recorded with the same working quartet plus guest musicians including clarinetist Yonatan Hadas, trumpeter Elad Tal, and vocalist Aya Zahavi Feiglin. Both albums are independently catalogued as Jazz on Apple Music/iTunes.

Achai has performed internationally with her quartet, including a 2022 date at the PAS Doble festival in Martorell, Catalonia, Spain, and was booked for the 36th Red Sea Jazz Festival (Eilat, November 2022), Israel's flagship jazz festival, where she was billed as an "up-and-coming pianist" in a six-piece instrumental lineup backing Ethiopian-Israeli rapper and spoken-word artist Orit Tashoma, under artistic director Yossi Fine. Weeks earlier, she had headlined Holon Theater's Woman's Festival on International Women's Day, March 8, 2022, a set led by her fronting an otherwise all-male quartet that drew coverage in both The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post. She also holds one minor, unrelated screen credit as a choir-ensemble contributor on the soundtrack of Avi Nesher's 2016 film Past Life.

Achai's jazz sound rests on a classical foundation, layered with rock, pop, minimalist, and African influences. She has described her early classical training as giving her "a solid basis on which to pursue the freedom of jazz." She cites Thelonious Monk, especially his 1957 recordings with John Coltrane, as a defining influence, alongside Steely Dan and heavy metal on the rock side, Steve Reich and Philip Glass on the minimalist side, Brazilian guitarist and composer Egberto Gismonti, and the liturgical compositions of Argentine composer Ariel Ramirez. That range shows up in her records as lyrical, folk-inflected melodic lines interrupted by angular, Monk-like rhythmic breaks, played by a standard jazz-quartet lineup of piano, bass, drums, and electric guitar rather than a horn-led frontline.