Later a composer, pianist and educator, I was first born in Jerusalem at the age of zero, and getting older since then. As a child I lived a few years in Honduras and Bolivia, and now reside in Berlin and in Prignitz, Germany. I hold degrees from Berklee College of Music (BM), the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (MM) and the University of California Santa Cruz (DMA). Yes, I am a doctor. I can cure your parallel fifths if you want.

As jazz pianist, I performed with legendary be-bop singer Sheila Jordan, bass players Chuck Israels and Avishai Cohen (he wasn’t that famous then, so don’t get too excited), drummer Ignacio Berroa, trombonist Phil Wilson and with many leading Israeli jazz musicians. During the late 80s and 90s I dressed awfully (everybody did) and recorded and performed with several top pop productions. My friend and colleague Atcha Bar and I established one of the first fully digital professional recording studios in Israel, where we composed and produced scores for dance, theater, television and film, along with much too much commercial music. I composed, arranged music and produced recordings for various ensembles and large orchestras, a children opera, and even composed a song commissioned for the Praemium Erasmianum ceremony at the Dutch Royal Palace in Holland. The queen did not keep in touch.

I founded, directed and produced several musical groups. Among them was the ensemble Ilana Eliya and Jabalio, a group of instrumentalists and a singer, performing mainly interpretations of music from Kurdistan. It has nothing to do with my own roots (carrots, beets). I produced and arranged music for the band's album and live performances, and toured with the group in Italy, Germany and France. My later group, the Yellow Submarine Ensemble (YSE), performed at major Jazz festivals, recorded two albums, and hosted many eminent Israeli and American musicians, including singer-song-writers Yoni Rechter and Shlomo Gronich.

Four CDs were released under my name: The Yellow Submarine Ensemble (jazz, 2000), Solika (jazz fantasies on Ladino songs for a ten-piece ensemble, 2008), Music From the Chamber (chamber music, 2009), Between Waters and Waters (suite for varying ensemble and a narrator, in collaboration with poet Liat Kaplan, 2009).

This here is downright bragging, so I’m switching to second person: Ittai Rosenbaum had established himself as a master educator, and many of his former students became leading musicians. Since the 2000s, along with studio teaching, he taught composition, jazz, orchestration, theory and ear training at the University of California Santa Cruz, the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and at the Tel-Aviv University. He initiated, led and established many educational programs and projects within the high school music-education system in Israel, participated in committees of the Israeli Ministry of Education, and was occasional consultant for the National Superintendent for Music Education. As teenager, he left high school at 12th grade, but now admits that it was a mistake: he should have left much earlier. His grandma, too, worked as promoter for a pharmaceutical firm, and always advised her grandchildren to avoid prescription drugs, knowing what they’re made of.

During the years 2003-2013 Rosenbaum had instructed and directed young musicians at the Jerusalem Music Center Program for Outstanding Young Musicians. In 2011 he was commissioned by the JMC president, maestro Murray Perahia to design a jazz course for classical pianists, a course that was led by Menachem Wiesenberg in the following years.

Among his teachers were Liz Magnes, Ray Santisi and Christian Jacob (jazz piano) Emanuel Krasovsky, Susan Cohen and Eduard Bedner (classical piano), Mark Kopytman, John Bavicci, Menachem Zur, Haim Permont, David Evan Jones, Larry Polansky and Hi Kyung Kim (composition), Bat-Sheva Rubinstein and Erez Rapaport (theory and ear-training), and Herb Pomeroy, Phil Wilson, Richard Evans, Bob Freedman, Bud Billings and Dennis Grillo (arranging).

His doctorate dissertation composition Ilinx for percussionist and ensemble was performed in December 2014 at the University of California Santa Cruz by percussionist Aiden Mckee. The work is an experiment based on research of phenomenology of gestures, theories of perception (particularly of gesture and space), and performance studies within different disciplines, including sociology, sociolinguistics and anthropology. The score asks the musicians to incorporate deliberate, exaggerated physical movement in their performance, and projects the connections between sound, movement, space and objects.