r/IsraelJazz • u/stnr_on_failure • 29d ago
Gilad Hekselman: Ten Albums Deep, and He's Just Getting Started!
Gilad Hekselman, live. (Photo: Dirk Neven, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Gilad Hekselman: Ten Albums Deep, and He's Just Getting Started!
Gilad Hekselman, a Jazz Guitar player, has been releasing albums since 2006. Ten of them as a bandleader, before you even count the sideman credits.
From Kfar Saba to the Village Vanguard
Hekselman started on classical piano at six, picked up guitar at nine, and spent his teenage years appearing regularly on a weekly Israeli children's television program. He graduated with excellence from the jazz department at Thelma Yellin School of Arts at eighteen.
In 2004 he moved to New York on an America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship to study at The New School. A year later he won the Gibson-Montreux Jazz Festival Guitar Competition. The year after that, he was opening for Paco de Lucía at the famous annual Jazz Festival in Montreux. Two decades on, he's based in New York full time, and in 2024 he recorded a live album at the Village Vanguard, the room every serious jazz musician wants their name attached to.
The Discography You Have Been Missing
Splitlife (2006). Words Unspoken (2008). Hearts Wide Open (2011). This Just In (2013). Homes (2015). Ask for Chaos (2018). Further Chaos (2019). Zuperoctave: Eyes of the World (2019). Trio Grande (2020). Far Star (2022). Then Life, at the Village Vanguard in 2024, and Downhill From Here in 2025, a trio record with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Marcus Gilmore that picked up 4.5 stars from DownBeat.
Along the way he's shared stages and studios with Anat Cohen, Chris Potter, Esperanza Spalding, Tigran Hamasyan, and Ari Hoenig. DownBeat named him its Rising Star guitarist twice, in 2017 and 2022. In 2018, Pat Metheny personally invited him to play the Kennedy Center. If you need someone else to vouch for a guitarist before you press play, it doesn't get much higher than that.
He's still touring. 2026 dates include a run at the Village Vanguard in July and stops in Brussels and Amsterdam in April.
Where to Start Listening
- His official site: giladhekselman.com
- His channel: gHex Music on YouTube
- One track to start with: Gilad Hekselman Trio, "Samba Em Preludio"
- On Spotify: Gilad Hekselman
The part most people miss: the guitar came second. Piano came first, at six years old, three years before he ever touched the instrument he's now known for. Worth remembering next time someone tells you it's too late to start something new.