Israela Margalit

Israela Margalit is an American concert pianist, recording artist, playwright and television writer.

Musical career
Israela Margalit is a concert pianist and recording artist, a playwright, screenwriter, TV writer and author. Her plays have been produced in New York, Moscow, Los Angeles and Hungary. Her TV specials have been shown on PBS, ZDF, ARD and in more than twenty countries.

She has appeared as a soloist of many of the world's leading orchestras including the Berlin, Munich, London, and Israel Philharmonics and the American Big Five.

Personal life
Israela Margalit is a mother of two from her marriage to conductor Lorin Maazel: Ilann Margalit Maazel, a civil rights lawyer, pianist and composer, and Fiona Maazel, a novelist. She studied music in Tel-Aviv, Paris and Munich. While she was taking a few years' sabbatical from performing to care for her small children, she studied philosophy, political science and literature at Case Western Reserve. She is a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate for Humane Letters from Lake Erie College. She speaks Hebrew, English, French and German, and writes in English. She was born in Palestine in 1944, and lives in New York.