Yonatan Levy is an Israeli bassist, guitarist, composer and record producer, credited on his own releases as Yonatan Levy and in most databases as Jonathan Levy, two spellings of the same Hebrew name. His Spotify biography puts him at more than 200 records, and the count is believable: he spent two decades as one of the busiest session bassists and producers in Israel, played bass in the rock band Izabo through its Eurovision year, moved to New York for most of the 2010s, and came back to Tel Aviv to co-lead an instrumental duo on Raw Tapes and to hold the bass chair in Yonatan Albalak's trio. There is no Wikipedia article about him in any language, and no source consulted for this profile gives a birth date or a birthplace beyond Israel, so this page reports what the credits and the label biographies actually document and leaves the rest blank.

What is documented starts with the instrument. His own biography says he was born to a father of German origin and a mother of Moroccan origin, and that the career began at eighteen, when he was picked to play bass for the singer-songwriter Yehudit Ravitz, whose 2000 album Longing (Helicon Records) is his earliest Israeli credit on Discogs. Session work followed at volume, and at twenty-four he bought an eight-track tape machine, the purchase he describes as the start of his production career. By the middle of the 2000s he was working both sides of the glass, playing bass on Israeli pop and rock records and producing them.

In 2001 he joined Izabo, the band led by singer and guitarist Ran Shem Tov, with Shiri Hadar on keyboards and Nir Mantsur on drums. Levy played bass and sang backing vocals on the debut Fun Makers, released December 9, 2003 on Labeleh and Roy Music, and on the Morning Hero EP that BMG UK & Ireland issued in 2004 under catalog number 82876627612, recorded at Different Recording Studios. Two more albums followed, Super Light (2008, NMC) and Life Is On My Side (Anova Music, dated 2012 on Spotify), along with the Izabotanika EP in 2013 and a 2010 single cut with Berry Sakharof. In 2012 Izabo represented Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku with "Time," an unusually unruly entry for that competition. The band reconvened in 2023 for a cover of "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" with Ilan Peled.

The production catalog runs parallel to all of it. Levy produced and mixed the 2007 self-titled debut by Habanot Nechama, the trio of Karolina, Yael Deckelbaum and Dana Adini, and went on to produce Adini's Big Girls (2007), Deckelbaum's Ground Zero (2010) and Joy & Sadness (2011), Astar Shamir's It's Between You And God (2011), the Chava Alberstein tribute album Helicon released in 2014, and David Broza's The Golden Ring (2018, Broza Records). Spotify's biography credits him with an ACUM Award for Best Song of the Year. As a sideman he turns up on records by Danny Sanderson, David D'Or, the Idan Raichel Project, Rona Kenan, Emily Karpel, Gali Atari, Mosh Ben Ari, Karni Postel and Roni Alter, and internationally with Steve Earle, JoJo Mayer and Ari Hoenig.

He relocated to New York and released his first album under his own name there: Yonatan, issued by Odradek Records on January 27, 2017 as ODRCD509 and filed by the label under jazz. Its twelve pieces run under forty minutes and are built, by his own account, out of ideas he finds by picking up an instrument and reacting to it, then works into shape. Odradek quotes him looking for "moments that change the color of the light in the room." No personnel list for the session could be confirmed from the label page, from Discogs, or from any retailer, and this profile does not guess at one. Bar LunÀtico in Brooklyn billed a night in March 2017 as "Yonatan (Featuring Jonathan Levy)," describing him as an Israeli bass player and composer working in melodic avant-garde.

Back in Tel Aviv he formed Duo Brothers with drummer Aviv Cohen, who records as Sol Monk. Levy wrote the music and played guitar, bass and keys; Cohen drummed, recorded and engineered the sessions at his Saloniki Studios; Rejoicer mixed and Asaf Shay mastered. Raw Tapes released the self-titled debut on August 14, 2020 and Cookie Stars on July 28, 2021, both with Avishai Cohen guesting on trumpet. Around the same circle he played bass on Eden Ladin's Mirage (La Reserve Records, November 11, 2022), on the tracks "Low Gravity" and "So Long, Comrade," alongside Albalak on guitar and Dan Mayo on drums, and on one track of Rejoicer's While You Are There (2023), a record that also carries Oded Tzur on saxophone.

Since at least 2023 he has played bass in Albalak's trio with Daniel Dor on drums, a group that has worked TASSA in Tel Aviv, the De Jazz Room series in Haifa and the Tel Aviv Jazz Festival on a book of Albalak originals, curated pieces and free improvisation. The trio has released no recording. Levy's second album under his own name, Farewell Metro Boy, came out on Raw Tapes on April 3, 2026, produced, recorded and mixed by Nitai Hershkovits, who also co-wrote and co-arranged all eleven tracks and plays keys throughout. Daniel Dor plays cymbal on "Lunar Thread" and drums on "Kosmus Jazz," Avishai Cohen takes the trumpet on "Heaven Is Space," and Rejoicer adds keys to "Salt and Smoke." Levy launched the record at the Jerusalem Jazz Festival on June 10, 2026 at the Israel Museum, in a trio with Itay Shamhuyevitz on keyboards and Yehali Stern on drums.

Levy is a bass player whose jazz standing comes from the company he keeps and the records he makes rather than from a conservatory pedigree or a standards repertoire. Nothing in the documented record shows him leading a bebop set; what it shows is a groove player and writer who moves between rock, Israeli pop, electronic production and contemporary jazz without treating any of them as a detour. Yonatan is the clearest statement of that method, a leader album on a jazz label whose own release copy reaches for rock grit, lullaby melodies and low bass moving under guitar lines to describe it, and which puts tenderness rather than virtuosity forward. Duo Brothers pushed the same instincts through a drums-and-everything-else format that Discogs files as contemporary jazz and psychedelia at once, with Levy writing every piece and Aviv Cohen recording them in a room the two of them controlled end to end. Farewell Metro Boy takes a third step, handing production to Nitai Hershkovits and letting the material get improvised into existence before it is shaped, which is close to how Levy described writing back in 2017. The compliment Israeli venue copy reaches for is that he is one of the country's leading bass players and producers, a reputation built on session reliability across genres rather than on a signature solo voice, and it is the reason a jazz guitarist like Albalak and a rock band like Izabo hired the same person.