Yonathan Avishai took classical piano lessons as a child in Tel Aviv and discovered jazz by his teens, gigging around Tel Aviv clubs from about age 14. His earliest surviving studio credit dates to 1999, a release called "Oleartchik Jazz" led by veteran Israeli bassist and singer Alon Oleartchik, on which a 22-year-old Avishai appeared alongside two other future Israeli jazz names, saxophonist Eli Degibri and trumpeter Avishai Cohen.

Three years later, in 2002, a chance meeting in Barcelona led to the band that put him on the international map: Third World Love, a quartet with Cohen on trumpet, Avishai on piano, bassist Omer Avital, and drummer Daniel Freedman. Their debut, "Third World Love Songs," was recorded that July, and the group released four more albums through 2011's "Songs and Portraits," working together for the better part of a decade.

In 2001 Avishai left Israel for France on an exchange program to Alsace. Rather than following a conservatory jazz track, he settled near Bordeaux and studied musicotherapy at the city's Atelier de Musicothérapie, teaching and performing on the side while building a career gig by gig, largely outside the jazz-school pipeline that shaped many of his peers.

His debut as a leader, "The Lost Boys," a duo record with drummer Bertrand Noël, was recorded June 16-18, 2009 at Studio Alhambra-Colbert in Rochefort-sur-Mer and released October 7, 2010. Four years later, on July 22-23, 2014, he recorded his first trio album, "Modern Times," with bassist Yoni Zelnik and drummer Donald Kontomanou, at a small studio in Boisné-la-Tude, a village in rural France. The 16-track record mixed his own compositions with standards including "I've Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)."

In 2019, ECM Records producer Manfred Eicher brought Avishai into the label for "Joys and Solitudes," his ECM leader debut, recorded at Lugano's Auditorium Stelio Molo RSI in February 2018 and released the following year. Between 2017 and 2024, Avishai appears on five ECM releases in total: Avishai Cohen's own ECM leader debut "Cross My Palm With Silver" (2017), "Joys and Solitudes" (2019), the duo record "Playing the Room" (2019) with Cohen, the quartet album "Naked Truth" (2022) with Cohen, bassist Barak Mori, and drummer Ziv Ravitz, and "Ashes to Gold" (2024) with the same quartet.

He has continued releasing under his own name alongside that ongoing partnership: the solo piano record "Retrouvailles" (2023) and "Shapes & Sounds" (2024), a third trio date with Zelnik and Kontomanou, released on the Jazz&People label. As of 2024, the Cohen-Avishai-Mori-Ravitz quartet was touring behind "Ashes to Gold," a partnership between the two Avishais now in its third decade.

Avishai's recorded output splits into two related strands: his own leader records (solo and trio, on Jazz&People, Paradis Improvisé, and ECM), built around a spare, harmonically patient touch that draws comparisons to the ECM piano lineage of Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley, and his long-running sideman partnership with trumpeter Avishai Cohen, where his piano work sits inside a more expansive, group-composed sound. His own trio records lean on standards and original compositions in roughly equal measure, a mix visible on "Modern Times," which pairs his own writing with jazz-age repertoire like "Cornet Chop Suey."

His training path (classical piano as a child, jazz absorbed through Tel Aviv club scenes and later a non-conservatory route through France) sets him apart from peers who came up through Berklee or a U.S. jazz program, and reviewers of his ECM records have pointed to that outsider path as part of what gives his playing its unhurried, patient character.