Yosef Gutman
Biography Yosef Gutman
Yosef Gutman Levitt
was born in 1979 in South Africa, where he grew up on a remote farm in the Knoppieslaagte area, about an hour outside Johannesburg. This rural upbringing provided him with both solitude and space that would later influence his musical sensibilities. He began music lessons at an early age but abandoned the piano in favor of skateboarding at age 11.
At 16, inspired by Jaco Pastorius and Weather Report, Yosef Gutman rekindled his passion for music and picked up the electric bass guitar. At 18, he submitted a recording of his arrangement of the South African National Anthem to Berklee College of Music in Boston, which subsequently offered him a scholarship.
Arriving at Berklee College in 1998, Yosef Gutman studied alongside budding talents such as guitarist Lionel Loueke, drummers Ferenc Nemeth, Ziv Ravitz, and Kendrick Scott, and saxophonists Dayna Stephens and Walter Smith III. During this formative period, he also developed a close friendship with his long-time production partner, Gilad Ronen.
In New York, Yosef Gutman performed with notable musicians including Lionel Loueke, Ben Monder, and Robert Stillman. By 2007, he had stepped away from music, and in 2009, moved to Jerusalem, where he currently resides with his wife and eight children. This decade-long hiatus would later inform his unique approach to composition when he eventually returned to music.
