Roni Kaspi | Discovered on Instagram, hired by Avishai Cohen
Roni Kaspi went from an Instagram video to Avishai Cohen's trio and her own records. Her playing, her Berklee training, and her setup explained.
In 2020, one of the most respected bassists in jazz was scrolling through Instagram and stopped on a video of a drummer he had never heard of.
He got in touch. She joined his trio. She was twenty.
Roni Kaspi’s career is the clearest evidence yet that the old routes into jazz — the conservatory, the scene, the years of paying dues — now sit alongside a much shorter one. The reason it worked is that she was good enough to survive the promotion.
Who is Roni Kaspi?
Roni Kaspi is an Israeli drummer, singer-songwriter and producer.
She graduated from the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, one of Israel’s most serious arts schools, and then took a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music, graduating in autumn 2021.
In 2020, while still studying, the bassist Avishai Cohen came across her playing online and brought her into his trio — one of the most visible small-group gigs in international jazz.
She has toured the world with him and played on Shifting Sands, the trio record that did a great deal to reset expectations of what a contemporary jazz trio sounds like.
Her own music
PONI (2024) is her debut EP, and it is not a jazz record.
It fuses jazz fundamentals with alt-pop, soul, electronica and world music, and she sings, writes and produces it herself. That combination — a serious jazz drummer who is also a pop producer — is where a lot of the most interesting music is currently coming from.
Drumeo’s voters gave her Jazz Drummer Of The Year in 2023.
What Roni Kaspi actually does
She has an enormous amount of information in her hands. Fast, dense, technically formidable playing — closer to modern fusion than to straight-ahead bebop.
She grooves hard. For a player with that much technique, the pocket is remarkably solid. Cohen’s music needs someone who can be busy and still be a rhythm section.
She plays modern time. Odd groupings, displaced accents and metric modulation, used as texture rather than as a demonstration.
She sings. Not as a novelty — she leads her own material as a vocalist.
She is a producer. PONI is arranged and produced as a pop record, and it changes how she plays: the drums serve a mix, not a stage.
Roni Kaspi’s setup
Her shells are not consistently documented across sources, and we would rather leave that blank than guess. If you have her current specification, the Rig Vault takes suggested edits on every page.
Every era we can verify, with buy links, is on Roni Kaspi’s Rig Vault page.
Want the sound without the rig?
The interesting lesson here is not gear at all.
Post your playing. Genuinely. Kaspi’s career changed because a video was good enough that a great musician stopped scrolling. That route did not exist twenty years ago and it plainly works — El Estepario Siberiano and Nandi Bushell are two more examples on this site.
Then be ready. The video gets you the phone call. Being able to hold a chair in a world-class trio at twenty is what keeps you there, and that comes from Thelma Yellin and Berklee and a great many hours.
For the gear side: a small, high-tuned kit and one very good ride cymbal is the whole jazz shopping list. Our cymbal buying guide is the place to start, and the Gear Guru will spec the rest.
Where to start listening
- Avishai Cohen Trio — Shifting Sands (2022). The gig that made her name.
- PONI (2024). Her own record, and nothing like the day job.
- Any Avishai Cohen live footage from the tours. Watch how much she plays without ever crowding the bass.
Final thoughts
Kaspi is at an interesting point: established enough to be voted Drumeo’s jazz drummer of the year, early enough that the shape of her career is still open.
The PONI direction suggests she may not stay a jazz drummer at all, which would be a loss to jazz and probably the right decision for her. Either way she is one of the most complete young musicians in the music.
Twenty, and hired off an Instagram video. It really can still happen.
See Roni Kaspi’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Nate Smith and Mark Guiliana — two more drummers refusing to stay in one genre.