Ilan Salem
Born in 1961, Ilan Salem is a leading figure in Israeli jazz and one of its most influential flutists. He began playing at eleven and graduated from Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts. In 1988, he earned a B.A. in Performance from Berklee College of Music and performed at major European festivals, including the Montreux Jazz Festival.
Ilan has performed and recorded with many of Israel’s leading artists and appeared in productions at the Israel Festival with Yoni Rechter and Achinoam Nini, as well as with Esther Ofarim and Yehudit Ravitz. He has also performed at the Red Sea Jazz Festival.
A respected educator, his former students include Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Eli Degibri, and Yonatan Avishai. Since 2006, he has been a senior lecturer at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
His albums include Big City Songs (2002), Twists and Turns (2005) with Kenny Werner, and Wild (2010), which earned him the Israeli Prime Minister’s Award for Jazz Composers (2011). Later releases include Elsewhere (2020) and a 2025 collaboration with Nitai Hershkovits, to be released on Raw Tapes in 2026.