Yehonatan Cohen is an Israeli jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, flautist, composer, and educator who has spent the past decade splitting his time between his own quieter chamber-scale projects and one of Israeli jazz's longest-running working bands. He started on trumpet at age 10 in his elementary school orchestra, transferring six months later to Ra'anana's municipal music center, where he played lead trumpeter and soloist in its youth ensemble. At 14 he was accepted into the jazz program at the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, then continued through a joint program between the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv and the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York, studying with saxophonist Chris Cheek, pianist Francesca Tanksley, and pianist Sam Yahel, and winning a New School scholarship toward his BFA in 2012.

While based in New York he performed in venues across the city and, on visits home, played in the African-influenced ensemble Black Guru, which appeared at the 2012 Tel Aviv Jazz Festival, and did sideman work behind Israeli singer-songwriters Efrat Gosh and David Broza. He released his debut leader album, Stories (Hebrew: Sipurim), in March 2015 on Bandcamp and CD Baby, its Bandcamp listing tagged both "Jazz" and "New York."

Cohen later returned to Israel, where he now teaches jazz saxophone and leads ensembles in the Jazz Studies Department of the Israel Conservatory of Music, Tel Aviv, including its joint program with the New School. Since at least 2018 he has been a core member of saxophonist Alon Farber's sextet Hagiga, one of the signature working groups of Israel's contemporary jazz scene, playing tenor saxophone, flute, and clarinet. He appears on Hagiga's Origin Records albums Reflecting On Freedom (2021), where he is also credited as co-producer alongside Farber and trombonist Oded Meir, and The Magician: Live in Jerusalem (2024), recorded live at the Israel Museum during the 2023 Jerusalem Jazz Festival with American trumpeter Dave Douglas as a guest. A November 2018 MidnightEast preview of an Israel Jazz Orchestra date independently places him in that big band's saxophone section as well, alongside Farber and fellow Hagiga/Orchestra players.

Alongside Hagiga, Cohen maintains a long-running duo with pianist Katia Toobool, releasing the co-composed album Neshima ("Breath") in May 2020; the duo has continued performing since, including a press-documented follow-up project referred to as "The Candy Store." He has also done outside sideman work, including a 2022 guest appearance on soprano saxophone on saxophonist Asaf Harris's Walk Of The Duck (Ubuntu Music), alongside pianist Guy Moskovich, and has performed in productions with veteran Israeli composer Yoni Rechter and at Tel Aviv's Cameri and Habima theaters.

Cohen's musical identity splits cleanly between two working contexts. In Hagiga, he is a section player and colorist inside Alon Farber's three-horn frontline, moving between tenor saxophone, flute, and clarinet within a band built around the "Israeli soundtrack" blend of swing, Moroccan, funk, and Brazilian influences that has defined the group for more than two decades. In his own duo work with Katia Toobool, the palette narrows to just saxophone and piano, favoring lyrical, conversational original composition over blowing-session intensity; the duo's album title, Neshima ("Breath"), points directly at that more intimate, exposed way of playing. His jazz-conservatory training under Chris Cheek, Francesca Tanksley, and Sam Yahel at the New School sits underneath both modes, and shows up as a consistently modern, harmonically considered improvising voice whether he is playing a big-band chart or a duo ballad.