Yoni Silver is an Israeli-born bass clarinetist, multi-instrumentalist, improviser and composer who has spent most of his working life in two overlapping scenes: the small, close-knit Tel Aviv free-improvisation community of the 2000s, and the London free-improv circle centered on Cafe OTO that he joined afterward. His main instrument is the bass clarinet, though his recorded work also carries credits on alto saxophone, clarinet, violin, keyboards, organ and computer-generated sound.

His earliest recorded work, in the late 1990s and 2000s, was as a backing and session musician for Israeli pop and rock artists, including singer-songwriters Aviv Geffen and Rona Kenan and vocalist Mika Karni, and as a member of the Tel Aviv art-rock band Habiluim (Ha-Biluim) alongside pianist and vocalist Maya Dunietz, with whom the band recorded four albums between 2003 and 2013. A Wikimedia Commons photograph documents Silver performing with Habiluim at the Zappa Club in Tel Aviv on January 2, 2006.

At the same time he was moving into the city's free jazz scene. In April 2004 he joined saxophonist Albert Beger's quintet for the album Listening (Earsay ES033), dedicated to the memory of Steve Lacy, who had died earlier that year. Verified at the Discogs release level, Silver plays alto saxophone on two tracks ("What A Day" and "Karma"), bass clarinet on four ("I Was Here Before," "Albert," "Sasha" and "Yogi Baba"), and organ on the title track, covering every one of the album's seven pieces on some instrument, alongside guitarist Yiftach Kadan, bassist Gabriel Meyer and drummer Haggai Fershtman. The following year he recorded A Mono Musical Suite For Three Manic Musicians (2005) as a trio with the veteran Israeli free-jazz clarinetist Harold Rubin and pianist Maya Dunietz, and in 2008 he appeared on German free-jazz drummer Günter "Baby" Sommer's Live In Jerusalem (Kadima Collective), recorded at Tel Aviv's Kadima Salon alongside a cluster of the city's other improvisers.

In 2011 Silver joined Romanian composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram's International Hyperion Ensemble as a bass clarinetist, a membership that has continued for more than a decade across a series of releases on the Edition Modern label: Live In Israel (2012, recorded at Hateiva, Jaffa, under Ilan Volkov's direction, with Stephen O'Malley appearing as a guest electric guitarist), Live In Israel - CD (II) (2013), Ilan Volkov Conducts Ana-Maria Avram · Iancu Dumitrescu (2014), two further 2015 releases, Sacrum Et Profanum (2022), and the Libelocus trilogy (2026). His solo recording career began in 2009-2010 with Peep Holes (Creative Sources), a bass-clarinet-only album recorded live at Levontin 7 in Tel Aviv and produced by conductor Ilan Volkov.

Silver subsequently relocated to London, where he became a regular presence in the free-improvisation scene built around Cafe OTO. He formed a long-running duo with drummer Steve Noble, documented on Home (2017, Aural Terrains), Lost (recorded 2015, self-released 2020) and the trio session Space 111 (2021, Takuroku, with bassist Farida Amadou), before the two were joined by double bassist John Edwards, one of the most recorded figures in British free improvisation, for the trio album Heme (2022, Shrike Records, recorded live at Cafe OTO). He also formed the trio NAX/XUS with drummer Mark Sanders and bassist Tom Wheatley (Confront Recordings, 2016), played bass clarinet and viola in vocalist/composer Ashley Paul's projects Ray (2021, Slip, with bassist Otto Willberg) and I Am Fog (2022, Orange Milk), and became a member of Charles Hayward's (of the group This Heat) band Abstract Concrete, whose self-titled debut LP appeared on The state51 Conspiracy in 2023. In 2021 he contributed bass clarinet to Daniel Blumberg's Mute Records score for the film The World To Come, alongside German free-jazz saxophonist and clarinetist Peter Brötzmann. His solo practice has continued in London on Ape (2016), Nethertongue (2019, Beartown Records) and Sun And Sky And Garden Breeze (2020, released on Cafe OTO's own Takuroku label), and he has been a recurring guest with the London Improvisers Orchestra and the ongoing project Staraya Derevnya.

Beyond performance, Silver composes for other musicians using text-based instructions, graphic scores and traditional notation; per his own artist biography, his orchestral arrangements have been performed by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Israel Contemporary Players, a claim not independently corroborated by any other source found for this profile.

Silver's playing draws on several distinct sources folded into a single improvisational language: the slow timbral evolution of spectral composition, the multiphonic, densely textural saxophone vocabulary of Evan Parker, noise and drone practice, and the reed technique of Middle Eastern mijwiz playing. On bass clarinet in particular he has developed what he calls "instrumental prosthetics," extended techniques and attachments that push the instrument's sound palette toward electronics and noise, and his live performances often extend past conventional instruments altogether into bowed strings, struck metal, rubbed household objects and garden tools. Cafe OTO, where he has performed and recorded repeatedly, describes him as "one of the leading figures of the Israeli free improvisation scene," though the bulk of his mature recorded work has been made in London alongside British improvisers Steve Noble, John Edwards, Mark Sanders and Alex Ward.