Matti Caspi does not know this, but many of his songs are being played at New York Jazz clubs. There are three reasons for this: First, several dozen young Israeli jazz musicians have become active in New York, growing in number and status. Second, an Israeli jazz musician aged 20 to 40 who hasn't grown up on Caspi's music and doesn't admire the singer-songwriter is yet to be found. Third, there is something about the New York experience that makes recently arrived artists want to connect to their roots more deeply than ever.

And the result: "Binyamina Days," "Eternal Covenant" and "Shalom Aleichem" are being heard at clubs like Fat Cat, the Jazz Gallery and Smalls.

"Only in New York did I realize how much I love Caspi and how much playing his songs, which I listened to as a child, makes me happy," says guitarist Gilad Hekselman, 24, who has been in New York for two and half years. "When you are in a place where they don't play those songs on the radio, you are hit by how beautiful they are, by how much they are a part of your roots. And when I play them at a club in New York, I feel it interests American jazz fans," he says. Caspi's "My Second Childhood" is the final number on Hekselman's debut disc "SplitLife," which was recently released by the New York-based Smalls Records.

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"A young person who moves to a place like New York, where there are so many stimuli, has two alternatives: He can either mix in or turn inward. With me, the latter happened," says pianist Omer Klein, also 24, who has been active in New York for a few months, following a year of study in Boston. Klein often plays Caspi's songs at performances, along with songs by Boaz Sharabi and Zohar Argov.

He recently performed "Alone" with bassist Omer Avital. The Israeli song for which he has received the warmest reactions from a non-Israeli audience, adds Klein, is Mordecai Zeira's "Two Lilies," which won him and bassist Haggai Cohen-Milo first prize in a prestigious competition in Belgium last year.

Klein and Hekselman are now on a visit to Israel, where they are promoting their new albums. This evening at 9 P.M., they are scheduled to appear at Tel Aviv's Levontin 7 Club, where they will play several pieces they wrote, and no doubt a song or two by Matti Caspi. "This will be our first time playing together outside a jam session," says Klein. At a later performance at the club, Hekselman will present numbers from his new album with bassist Gilad Abro and drummer Daniel Freedman.

Klein will give two additional duet performances later in the week. He is scheduled to appear with Alon Olearchick in Binyamina's Shuni Fortress on Thursday, and with saxophonist Daniel Zamir on Saturday night at the Lab in Jerusalem. Olearchick attended a number of Klein's performances three years ago, and invited him to join him in performing and recording an album.

"This was, of course, a huge compliment," says Klein. "Alon was one of the first musicians I discovered as a child. My parents say that at the age of 3 or 4, I would go around the house singing 'Please don't go, Miriam.'"

Soft landing

Hekselman and Klein would not have won recognition in New York had they not been excellent musicians (and also determined people unafraid to phone famous New York jazz musicians and offer to play with them), but they are the first to admit that their landing was softer than that of Israelis who came before them. When Omer Avital, bassist Avishai Cohen and trombonist Avi Leibovitch arrived in New York about 15 years ago, there was no one to help them get into the local scene. Their impressive success created a good reputation for Israeli jazz and encouraged more musicians to try their luck in New York.

And thus, when Hekselman came to the city, saxophonist Anat Cohen immediately took him under her wing. Cohen, one of the pillars of the Israeli jazz community in New York, invited him to play with her in performances and introduced him to local musicians. When Klein and Cohen-Milo proposed their album to the record company, she phoned the company's owner and showered compliments on the two young musicians.

Can the word "community" really describe the group of Israeli jazz musicians in New York? Hekselman and Klein are not sure how to respond. "The Israeli musicians go to each other's performances, but there is a certain degree of myth to the claim that this is a community. It would be more accurate to say that there are several small groups of friends," says Klein.

Hekselman says, "Alongside a kind of communality, there is also a withdrawn individualism. This is good. It's important that there be a community, but it is no less important to leave it. I didn't come to New York in order to play with Israelis."

Hekselman, who is now in his third year of studies at the New School, says being in New York has changed his playing. "The moment I arrived in the city, my playing was transformed, and I was aware of this. New York jazz has a sound of its own. Something in the rhythm pushes forward, in a reflection of the lifestyle here, the extremity of the place. It can be very energetic or very melancholic, very collective or very independent."

Similar but different

But despite the clear New York influence, Hekselman says the Israeli musicians are unique. "The New York sound tends to be dark, gray, a bit cold. I think that in our playing, despite the great differences among us as individuals, there is a kind of warmth that speaks to the hearts of the listeners."

Hekselman and Klein are an excellent example of the differences among the musicians. Hekselman has grown closer to his musical roots, but he draws mainly from the jazz tradition; in contrast, Klein's playing is planted deeply in Israeli, Arab and North African music.

In Israel, Klein was a member of the Street Players trio along with Cohen-Milo and drummer Mark Mosheyev. In the summer of 2005, after a failed performance at the Jazz Festival in Eilat that marked the end of the trio, Klein and Cohen-Milo flew to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory. A few months ago, Klein left his studies in Boston, with the encouragement of some of his teachers, and moved to New York. There he lives with his girlfriend, opera singer Alma Moshonov, leads a trio of his own, plays with others and is studying with pianist Fred Hirsch. The aim, he says, is to develop an international career that will enable him to live in Israel and perform abroad.

One of the reasons Klein wants to return to Israel at some stage is his desire to sing, which he does occasionally with the Moira group (performing this Wednesday and next Monday at the Tmuna Theater, Tel Aviv).

Hekselman also mentions another reason. In the next few years he will probably stay in New York, he says, "but when I have a family, I will come back to Israel." All the jazz musicians are in agreement about this: New York is the best place to develop and earn a living as a jazz musician, but it is a bad place to raise children.