[4][5] Gandelsman was born in Moscow, in the then-USSR, to a violist father and a pianist mother.

His family left Moscow for Israel in 1990, and Gandelsman moved to the United States at the age of 17.

[3] In 2020, Gandelsman recorded Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites on the violin, in a performance The New York Times called "feather-light and rooted in dance and folk music".

[6] On November 8 and 9, 2024, the week of the 2024 United States presidential election, Gandelsman performed his piece This is America at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[3] Initially released in 2022, This is America consists of 28 pieces Gandelsman commissioned from a variety of musicians, including Rhiannon Giddens, Angélica Negrón, and Conrad Tao.