ASAF SIRKIS

BIOGRAPHY

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

DISCOGRAPHY

ENDORSEMENT

Asaf Sirkis is a drummer, composer and educator. His music has grown out of a mixture of jazz, progressive and contemporary music, Middle Eastern traditions, South Indian rhythm and a lifelong interest in finding different ways of organizing rhythm and sound.

He was born in Petah Tikva, Israel, in 1969 and grew up in Rehovot. His musical surroundings were quite varied. His father listened to a lot of classical music, including organ music, and his brother later became an opera singer. Rehovot was also home to a Yemenite community in the neighbourhood of Sha’arayim, whose music and rhythms made a strong impression on him.

As a child, Asaf initially wanted to play electric bass. When that proved difficult to arrange, he started making his own drums out of whatever he could find around the house. Eventually his father bought him a drum kit, and at the age of 12 he began taking lessons. He soon became involved in school bands and started discovering how much he enjoyed not only playing drums but also making music with other people.

His teenage listening was broad. Rock bands such as The Beatles, The Police, Yes and Genesis sat alongside jazz, fusion and classical music. Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report were particularly influential, as was the music of Allan Holdsworth. At the same time, the music he heard around him in Israel continued to shape his sense of rhythm and melody.

After completing his military service between 1987 and 1990, Asaf began working professionally as a musician in Israel. He played in a variety of jazz, rock, klezmer, free-jazz and world-music groups and worked with musicians including Harold Rubin, Albert Beger, Yair Dlal and Eyal Sela. He was interested in playing as many different kinds of music as possible and in learning from the musicians around him.

During these years he also began writing his own music. In 1993 he moved to Tel Aviv and formed his first trio in 1995 with pianist Kobi Arad and bassist Gabriel Mayer. The trio recorded One Step Closer, his first album as a leader.

Around this time another musical idea began to take shape. Asaf had become deeply interested in the organ music of Olivier Messiaen, Maurice Duruflé and César Franck. He listened to Messiaen extensively and became fascinated by the idea of taking some of the qualities of this music into a completely different setting.

The result was The Inner Noise.

The original idea was simple but unusual: church organ, electric guitar and drums, playing newly composed music. In 1996–97 Asaf began developing the project in Israel with organist Adi Goldstein and guitarist Amir Perelman. The music did not really belong to any one existing category. It had elements of jazz, rock, contemporary classical music and improvisation, but was also very much its own thing.

The project was commissioned by the Tel Aviv City Council and performed in Israel in 1997–98. It was not always an easy experience. Some audiences found the music difficult to understand and, on at least one occasion, a performance was interrupted by the police. Looking back, however, the project became an important part of Asaf’s musical development. It gave him the freedom to follow his own compositional ideas without worrying too much about where they fitted stylistically.

When Asaf later moved to London, he rebuilt The Inner Noise with organist Steve Lodder and guitarist Mike Outram. The group eventually recorded three albums: Inner Noise, We Are Falling and The Song Within. The music continued to develop, bringing together composed material, improvisation, unusual rhythms and the distinctive sound of organ, guitar and drums.

In October 1998 Asaf left Israel and traveled through Europe before settling in London in 1999. London opened up a much larger musical environment and brought him into contact with musicians from many different backgrounds. One of his early London collaborations was with Palestinian oud player and composer Adel Salameh. Playing with Adel introduced Asaf further to Middle Eastern percussion and musical traditions. He also continued working with jazz and improvising musicians and became increasingly involved in the city’s varied jazz scene.

In 2000 he began working with saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and became a founding member of the Orient House Ensemble. The group recorded seven albums and toured extensively in Britain and Europe. Their album Exile won the Best CD of the Year at the 2003 BBC Jazz Awards. In 2009, after nearly 9 years with the OHE, Asaf left the band to focus on his solo career as well as other collaborations.

Alongside his work with other musicians, Asaf continued to develop his own groups and compositions. He formed the Asaf Sirkis Trio in 2007 with guitarist Tassos Spiliotopoulos and bassist Yaron Stavi. The trio released The Monk, Letting Go and Shepherd’s Stories. The music gave him another setting in which to combine detailed composition with improvisation and the freedom of a working band.

His collaboration with composer and saxophonist Tim Garland became another important part of his musical life. Asaf played on a number of Garland’s projects, including The Mystery, featuring Chick Corea and the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, Lighthouse with pianist Gwilym Simcock, and Songs for the North Sky. These projects brought together composition, improvisation and large-scale musical arrangements and involved extensive touring.

Asaf has always enjoyed working with musicians who bring something different to the music. Over the years he has recorded and performed with musicians including Dave Holland, Jacob Collier, Gary Husband, Gwilym Simcock, Larry Coryell, John Abercrombie, Robert Wyatt, Natacha Atlas, Dave Liebman, John Taylor, Norma Winstone, Kenny Wheeler, Andy Sheppard and many others.

He has also maintained a long-running musical partnership with composer and singer Sylwia Bialas. Together they formed the Sirkis/Bialas International Quartet, performing and recording original music that brings together composition, improvisation and elements of different European musical traditions. The Sirkis Bialas IQ was active between 2014 to 2019 and released two albums; Come To Me and Our New Earth.

Asaf’s association with MoonJune Records began in the 2016s and led to many further international collaborations. Through his own projects and recordings with other MoonJune artists, he worked with musicians from Europe, Asia, Indonesia and the United States, including Dwiki Dharmawan, Mark Wingfield, Markus Reuter, Dusan Jevtovic and Nicolas Meier.

Teaching and rhythm education have gradually become another major part of Asaf’s musical life. His interest in South Indian music began when he was still in Israel, and after moving to London he had the opportunity to study more closely with musicians from the South Indian community. He became particularly interested in Konnakol, the South Indian practice of vocalising rhythm. He studied with mridangam master Paramasamy Kirupakaran and began finding ways of applying the principles he was learning to drum kit, composition and rhythm education. For Asaf, Konnakol became less about learning another musical vocabulary and more about finding a way of thinking about rhythm. He developed a practical approach to teaching rhythmic concepts through the voice, making complicated rhythmic structures easier to hear, remember and play. He has since taught Konnakol and rhythm in workshops, seminars and private lessons internationally, as well as through his teaching at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. Asaf’s Mastering Rhythm With Konnakol is a free online course which has been helping musicians around the world understand and internalize rhythm.

During the period when touring stopped in 2020, Asaf found himself with more time to write and record music. This led to another project that has become a significant part of his work: the Time For Space music diary. The series began as a way of sharing short pieces of new and previously unreleased music through YouTube. Asaf wrote, played, recorded and filmed the material himself. What began quite informally has grown into a large collection of pieces, some of which have subsequently been released as drum play-along albums. The series has also become a way of sharing music directly with listeners and giving other drummers the opportunity to play the pieces themselves. The Time For Space complete play-along for drummers (vol. 1 to 8) is available on Asaf’s Bandcamp page.

The years since 2020 have brought further changes. In 2021 Asaf joined saxophonist Emma Rawicz’s Chroma group, recording and touring with the band. In January 2023 he joined Soft Machine, beginning a new chapter with one of the pioneering British jazz-rock groups. He has since toured internationally with the band and contributed compositions to their album Thirteen.

Composition has remained at the centre of all these different activities. Whether writing for a trio, a large ensemble, The Inner Noise, Soft Machine, a drum play-along series or solo piano, Asaf has continued to be interested in rhythm, structure and the relationship between written and improvised music.

In 2026 he released Letters, a collection of 24 through-composed pieces for solo piano. The pieces were written between 2020 and 2024 and recorded in February 2026 at Ursa Major Recording Studio in Italy on a restored 1915 Steinway concert grand. The recording has been filmed and videos of all 24 pieces from Letters are available on Asaf’s YouTube channel. Letters is a very different kind of project from the music for which Asaf is best known. Although he has played piano for many years, this is his first solo piano album after several decades of being primarily known as a drummer. The album gave him an opportunity to put the compositional side of his musical life at the centre without having to think about the role of the drummer at all.

Looking back across his career, there is a thread connecting many of these different projects. Asaf has repeatedly found himself drawn to music that sits between categories: between composition and improvisation, between different rhythmic traditions, between acoustic and electronic sounds, and between the roles of drummer, composer and educator. He continues to perform, compose, record and teach, while developing new music and exploring different ways of sharing it with other musicians and listeners.

MORE ABOUT ASAF

Interview with Ian Patterson

Interview with Richard Sharma

Interview with Anil Prasad

Wikipedia

Asaf Sirkis is a drummer, composer and educator whose work brings together jazz, progressive and contemporary music with influences from Middle Eastern and South Indian musical traditions.

Born in Israel and based in London since 1999, he has worked with musicians including Gilad Atzmon, Tim Garland, Dave Holland, Jacob Collier, John Abercrombie, Robert Wyatt and Natacha Atlas. He is a member of Soft Machine and leads and co-leads several projects, including the Sirkis/Bialas International Quartet and The Inner Noise.

Asaf is also known for his work in rhythm education and Konnakol, the South Indian practice of vocalizing rhythm, which he teaches internationally and at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

His work as a composer includes music for ensembles, drums and solo piano. In 2026 he released Letters, his first solo piano album, featuring 24 through-composed pieces written between 2020 and 2024.

Asaf Sirkis endorses:

Istanbul Agop cymbals
Vic Firth sticks
Remo drum heads
Protection Racket cases

BACK TO TOP