About
Yuval “Yuvi” Gerstein (born 14 September 1979) is a musician, producer and guitarist. He is known as a founding member of Coolooloosh and as the creator of GRIDI.
Biography
In 2000 he studied with American guitarist Mark Whitfield. From 2001 to 2005 he completed a bachelor’s degree in jazz performance at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. In 2010–2011 he earned a master’s in music at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he made the film Under Your Skin, which screened at the National Portrait Gallery. While in London he specialized in music production and sound design in recording studios, absorbing a wide range of musical influences.
Career
From 1999 to 2011 he was the guitarist of the Jerusalem folk-rock band Ham uMechamem Boom. The band released several albums, including one produced by Dan Toren on Hed Arzi.
In 2003 he co-founded Coolooloosh in Jerusalem with four other musicians. The group began as an instrumental jazz-funk outfit; in 2004 American rapper Rebel Sun joined, and the band moved into hip-hop, funk and jazz. Besides playing guitar and singing, Gerstein composed several of the songs.
In 2005 he composed and arranged music for an animation film by Roi Idan.
In 2013 he co-founded The Slick Studio in Tel Aviv with Ori Vinokur. Sessions there included Amir Lev, Giva Alon, The Giraffes and Shani Peleg. Gerstein worked as producer, mixer and recording engineer from 2013 to 2019. In 2017 he produced singer Oshi Masala’s album Oshi, and was co-producer on recordings by Miqedem and other artists.
In 2015 he created GRIDI — a large physical MIDI sequencer (2.80 × 1.65 metres) with built-in LEDs. Players compose by placing balls on a 16×16 grid: each row is a pitch, each column is time. It translates computer-based electronic composition into a physical, interactive installation. GRIDI premiered in July 2015 at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem as part of Nekudat Maga 2015, and has since appeared at international festivals including Digital Life Design in Munich and Slush in Finland.
In 2016 he formed the electronic duo Sponj with Tom Iddan. The duo mixes ethnic music with electronic beats, drawing on Balkan, Arabic and Jewish motifs. They released a debut album, Sponj (2017), and a 2019 single with Italian singer Rocco Zaca, “Hassan Funtana.”
From 2016 to 2018 he taught in Shenkar’s master’s program in games. Since 2019 he has been Music Lead at Simply, on the Simply Guitar app. In 2020 he joined Artlist Original, a group of artist-producers making music for Artlist, and released a jazz guitar solo album, Straight to the Bar.
On 12 September 2025 he released his debut solo album Cells: eleven songs about loss, grief, hope and love. The tracks came out as singles through 2024–2025 ahead of the full album. It mixes downtempo, trip-hop, jazz-funk and Middle Eastern beats, with Beno Hendler on bass, Shahar Haziza on drums, and Yoav Shemesh as co-composer.
Discography
Adapted from the Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0).