Jerusalem, 8 February, 2026 (TPS-IL) — Israeli musician and composer Matti Caspi, one of the most influential figures in Israel’s modern cultural history, died overnight at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center, the hospital announced on Sunday morning.
“With a heavy heart and deep sadness we announce the passing of our beloved husband and dear father. The light in our lives has gone out. His love and the work he left behind will always continue to be a part of us forever. You were and will remain the essence of our existence,” Caspi’s family said in a statement released by Ichilov.
Caspi, who was 76, revealed in May 2025 that he had been diagnosed with advanced cancer, a disclosure that forced him to cancel all public performances.
“Just like in one of his unforgettable songs — ‘Someone is Taking Care of Me Up There’ — too soon we have parted from Matti Caspi, one of the greatest Israeli creators of our generation, who has gone to take care of us from above,” President Isaac Herzog tweeted.
“And we are left with his masterful works, with the melodies that showed kindness to wonderful texts and granted them eternal life, with the compositions that shaped Israeli music for decades, with the arrangements in which his unique fingerprint was so clearly felt,” Herzog added.
Born in 1949 on Kibbutz Hanita in northern Israel to parents who immigrated from Romania, Caspi showed musical talent from an early age. He began playing instruments as a child and studied piano formally before launching a professional career as a teenager. His early exposure to military performance frameworks in the late 1960s helped propel him into national recognition and marked the beginning of a decades-long presence at the center of Israeli music.
Over more than five decades, Caspi shaped the sound of popular and theatrical music in Israel, both as a performer and behind the scenes.
According to the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers in Israel (ACUM), Caspi’s body of work includes more than 1,000 compositions. Many became deeply embedded in Israeli public life, performed across generations and adapted for stage, radio and television. In 2006, he received ACUM’s Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his enduring influence.
Caspi’s career extended well beyond composing and performing. He was widely regarded as a meticulous musical architect, known for sophisticated arrangements and an openness to global influences that broadened the local musical landscape. He produced and guided numerous albums by other artists and was credited with helping introduce new styles and sounds into mainstream Israeli music from the 1970s onward.
In recent years, Caspi spoke candidly about his declining health. In a televised interview following his cancer diagnosis, he said the disease had stripped him of his ability to play and create, adding that his physical condition had left him dependent on medication and outside assistance. A public fundraising campaign launched to support his treatment raised millions of shekels within days. Proceeds from a tribute concert held last summer were donated, at his request, to families affected by the war with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Caspi is survived by his wife and four children from two marriages.
Funeral details were not immediately released.
Related Topics
