Thousands Filed Past Matti Caspi's Coffin at the Tel Aviv Opera

Thousands of people gathered outside the Tel Aviv Opera House on Monday to pay their last respects to the composer, arranger and performer Matti Caspi. His coffin was placed in the plaza and the public filed past it while his songs played, drawing applause from the crowd. Caspi, 76, had died of cancer at Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital the previous day.

The ceremony was hosted by Noam Semel and included wreaths from a range of organisations and speeches from the mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, and from musicians who had worked with Caspi for decades: Riki Gal, Shlomo Gronich and Danny Robs. Soloists of the Israeli Opera took part, led by Adi Cohen, with musical director Dudi Zeva.

The order of the ceremony

Cohen opened with "Another Day," which Caspi composed to words by Rachel Shapira, closing with the words "Thank you, Matti." Israeli Opera singers followed with a run of Caspi standards including "A Moment of Silence," "My Second Childhood," "Shir Yona" and "Ma Zat Ahava." Gil Shohat played a medley of his tunes; Gronich performed "Achrei Shna'sat (Vaotach)"; and Robs joined Gronich for "Tsiyur."

"Thanks to his melodies, arrangements, and playing, we learned, among other things, what love is and what a place for concern looks like," Huldai said. "He is the man who explained to us that elusive feeling we feel when we become parents and didn't know how to call it our second childhood."

The composer Akiva Nof, whose song "Isabel" Caspi set, described a man who worked by lowering the temperature in the room rather than raising it. Caspi asked him to sing quietly through what Nof believed was a rehearsal; when Nof said he was ready to record, Caspi told him it had already been recorded. "He was a guide," Nof said. "He didn't show off, didn't let others feel that he was something special, but he was something special."

Danny Robs, who collaborated with Caspi across forty years, told the Press Service of Israel that his music "was not just songs: it was part of all our lives." He called Caspi "the snowy edge of the mountain where the air is thin."

A career that began on a kibbutz in the far north

Caspi was born in 1949 on Kibbutz Hanita, on Israel's northern border, to parents who had immigrated from Romania. He played instruments as a child and studied piano formally before turning professional as a teenager; exposure to the military performance troupes of the late 1960s (then the main route into Israeli popular music) carried him into national recognition.

Over more than five decades he worked as much behind the desk as in front of an audience, producing and shaping albums for other artists. In its obituary, Ynetnews credited him with raising "the harmonic bar of Hebrew song," pointing to unconventional harmonies, a distinctive sense of timing and a fusion of Israeli pop with Brazilian and jazz influences, and to collaborations with figures including Sasha Argov, Shlomo Gronich and Yehudit Ravitz. Ynet also reported that Caspi had disclosed in May 2025 that he was being treated for advanced metastatic cancer, cancelled performances, and spoke publicly about the cost of treatments not covered by Israel's health system.

Why the numbers attached to his name come from ACUM

The figure repeatedly cited for Caspi's output (more than 1,000 compositions) and the lifetime achievement award he received both come from ACUM, the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers in Israel. ACUM is the non-profit collecting society founded in 1936 that licenses performing and reproduction rights under Israeli copyright law on behalf of more than 10,000 members, and distributes royalties through reciprocal agreements with sister societies worldwide. It is, in practice, the body that knows how often a Hebrew song is played, which is why its catalogue counts and its prizes carry weight in Israeli music.

The venue for the farewell was fitting in its own way. The plaza belongs to the Israeli Opera's home on Shaul Hamelech Boulevard in Tel Aviv, the Shlomo Lahat Opera House, a house whose soloists sang the songs of a man who worked mostly in pop, theatre and jazz.

What the account did not say

The report of the funeral did not give the length of Caspi's illness beyond the cause of death, did not say where he was buried, and did not name the organisations that sent wreaths. Caspi is survived by his wife and four children from two marriages.