Ofri Nehemya on Flow States, Lessons From The Greats, and Letting It Cook

Ofri Nehemaya is barely in his ‘30s, but has already played and toured with Shai Maestro, Aaron Goldberg, Avishai (Bass) Cohen (the same drum chair where Mark Guiliana got his first big break), and Gilad Hekselman. He’s also no stranger to bandleading, releasing a viral, self-produced, straight-to-YouTube single called Just Sayin at age…I think it was 19;)

Ofri has been on my radar since then, and I was excited to ask him about how he practices, how he channels flow, how he approaches moving to a new scene and “fitting in”, and more.

You’ll see in the opening minutes I’m trying to pull some practice details out of him, and he just wants to talk about flow state and making music, so we go in that direction.

(I still suspect he has some juicy shed secrets. Perhaps we’ll explore those in a Part Two.)

Chapters

0:00 - what has Ofri been practicing lately? 4:10 - applying practice to music 10:15 - how he practiced playing in flow 15:33 - why we get nervous to perform 19:15 - lessons Ofri has learned from musical greats 27:05 - Ofri's advice on plugging into a scene 33:15 - approaching people with authenticity 36:51 - the story behind Ofri's most famous song