Udi Shlomo is an Israeli-born drummer, composer, and arranger, raised on Kibbutz Nahshon with family roots in Iraq, Poland, and the former Czechoslovakia. He built a working career as a jazz sideman in Israel through the 2000s: Discogs credits him on drums for Judy Lewis and the Phoenix Over Manhattan Acoustic's No Expectations (2004, Visionary Insomniac Records), and for Odelia Dahan and the Yellow Submarine Ensemble's Solika (2008, The Yellow Submarine), a Ladino-song project on which he shared the drum chair with fellow Israeli drummer Aviv Cohen. He also drummed and played percussion on guitarist Ido Bukelman's Cracked Song (recorded February 2010, released 2011 on OutNow Recordings), and on guitarist Assaf Kehati's debut A View From My Window (2010), where he shared the bandstand with saxophonist Alon Farber and bassist Daniel Sapir.

In 2010 Shlomo relocated to Trondheim, Norway, where he has lived and worked since. There he built a second career as a bandleader and touring sideman, combining original compositions inspired by his kibbutz upbringing with new arrangements of traditional Hebrew and Jewish folk songs, colored by the experience of Norwegian diaspora life -- a blend billed on his own materials and in reviews as "world jazz." His two leader albums to date both appeared on Alessa Records, the same Austrian imprint that later issued saxophonist Omri Abramov's Niogi album, and both are catalogued on Discogs under genre "Jazz," style "Contemporary Jazz." Diaspora House (2021) is a quintet session recorded live at Athletic Sound in Halden, Norway, with Omri Abramov (tenor and soprano saxophone, also assistant producer), Jesse Schilderink (tenor saxophone), Håvard Aufles (piano), and David Andersson (double bass). You & Me (2023) again features Abramov on tenor, alongside trumpeter Oscar Andreas Haug, pianist Moshe Elmakias, bassist Andreas Svabø, and guest reedman Eirik Hegdal on clarinet, bass clarinet, and baritone saxophone.

Diaspora House was launched with an album-release concert at Dokkhuset in Trondheim on May 7, 2021, with saxophonist Erlend Vangen Kongtorp filling the reed chair alongside Haug, Aufles, Andersson, and Shlomo -- a lineup independently confirmed via the Trondheim Jazzfest's own event listing. Shlomo has since toured the project internationally; a 2025 concert listing (GoOut) shows further live dates. His own promotional materials list an extensive club and festival circuit built up over his Norway years, including Pizza Express Jazz Club, the Ankara Jazz Festival, the Sibiu Jazz Festival, the Oslo Jazz Festival, the Trondheim Jazz Festival, the Jerusalem Jazz Festival, the Tel Aviv Jazz Festival, the Usadba Jazz Festival, Blue Note Poznań, the Delhi Jazz Festival, Prague's Jazz Dock, the Jazzinec International Music Festival, Tangente Jazz+, Jazzfest Brno, and Munich's Jazzclub Unterfahrt -- claims carried here as his own stated touring history rather than independently date-verified one by one (see notes.md). One further appearance is independently confirmed by name and venue, though not by full program detail: a 2024 "Jazz in the Garden" concert in the Jewish Museum Berlin's Kultursommer series.

Reviews of You & Me single out its funk and jazz-rock inflections, hearing echoes of the Brecker Brothers and Blood, Sweat & Tears in its horn-driven arrangements, set against more reflective pieces such as the hymn-like "Country Song" and the lullaby-like title track. Earlier notices for Diaspora House praised the quintet's "indestructible arrangements" (Neue Musikzeitung) and Shlomo's own playing as "purposeful and very, very clean" even at its busiest (Jazzreview).

Shlomo's music sits at the meeting point of two songbooks: original compositions built from childhood memory and a running series of new arrangements of Hebrew and Jewish folk material, reworked inside a jazz quintet rather than a folk ensemble. That combination is what reviewers and his own materials consistently call "world jazz," but the arranging language underneath it leans hard-driving and horn-forward -- reviewers have heard the Brecker Brothers and Blood, Sweat & Tears in You & Me's brass writing, and Diaspora House pairs two tenor saxophones (Omri Abramov and Jesse Schilderink) for a similarly thick horn front line. As a drummer, he has been singled out repeatedly for restraint inside density: reviewers describe him "guiding the ensemble with a supportive and vibrant touch" and note that even his busiest, most flailing-sounding passages stay "purposeful and very, very clean." Both albums foreground his own kit playing as the connective tissue of the arrangements rather than a rhythm-section afterthought.