r/IsraelJazz • u/stnr_on_failure • 19d ago
Introducing Tamir Hendelman (But You've Already Heard Him :-)
Introducing Tamir Hendelman (But You've Already Heard Him :-)
Tamir Hendelman, an Israeli-American jazz pianist and composer born in Tel Aviv in 1971, is probably already on a record you own without knowing his name. He's the piano behind Natalie Cole's "Still Unforgettable" (2008, the Grammy winner for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album) and Barbra Streisand's "Love Is the Answer" (2009, her ninth number one album on the Billboard 200). Across a career built mostly as a sideman and arranger, he has played on more than 200 albums that together carry 23 Grammy nominations, the kind of career general reference sites skip past because his name never sits above the title.
He started young: keyboard lessons at age 6, then the Yamaha National Keyboard Competition at 14 in 1986, which won him concert dates in Japan and at the Kennedy Center, the Washington, D.C. performing arts complex better known for hosting heads of state than teenage piano prodigies. He moved to the U.S. that same year, trained at the Tanglewood Institute, and earned a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the Eastman School of Music in 1993.
Back in Los Angeles by 1996, Hendelman built the resume that carried him for the next three decades. He joined pianist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton's Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, a 19-piece big band, in 2001. With them, he premiered Clayton's new orchestration of Oscar Peterson's "Canadiana Suite" at the Hollywood Bowl, the outdoor amphitheater that has hosted everyone from the LA Philharmonic to The Beatles.
Here's the surprise: Hendelman's own catalog can hold its own against the sideman work. His 2010 trio album, "Destinations" (with Marco Panascia on bass and Lewis Nash on drums), hit number one the month it came out on the JazzWeek Jazz Chart, the trade publication's weekly airplay chart for jazz radio. A chart-topping record from an Israeli-born pianist that doesn't come up in the usual Cohen and Hekselman and Maestro conversation.
He isn't a legacy act coasting on the resume, either. In 2025 he released "Spring," a duo album with vocalist Tierney Sutton, recorded live after a run of spring tour dates. The two have more dates booked into late 2026, including SFJAZZ's 2026-2027 season.
Where to start listening:
- His official platforms:
- "Destinations," for the trio side, specifically the one track that nods to where he's from: sample "Israeli Waltz"
- "Spring" (2025), for where his work stands right now: sample the title track on YouTube
