Israela Margalit is an American concert pianist, recording artist, playwright and television writer. Born in Haifa in 1944, she studied at the Hareali School in Haifa, the Tel Aviv Academy of Music and the Musikhochschule in Munich. She later studied philosophy, political science and literature at Case Western Reserve University.
As a soloist, Margalit has appeared with the Berlin, Munich, London and Israel Philharmonics and the American Big Five orchestras. Her recordings include works by Copland, Barber, Ives, Korngold, Delius, Elgar and Walton; the Korngold recording received a British Music Industry Award for Best CD. Other releases include piano concertos by Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Shostakovich and Schnittke, as well as works by Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Beethoven and Liszt. She also recorded Brahms works for four hands with her son, Ilann Margalit Maazel, and Chausson’s concerto for violin, piano and string quartet with violinist Lorin Maazel and musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra.
Margalit wrote and performed in television specials about Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, presented with Peter Ustinov and broadcast by PBS, Transtel and Deutsche Welle. The programs received a Primetime Emmy nomination, two NEA Media Awards and a gold medal at the New York TV and Video International Festival. She also wrote and performed in the television production Beethoven, the Prodigy, the Titan.
Her stage works include What Kind of Woman, Forbidden, Screwed, First Prize and Night Blooming Jasmine. Her screenplays include Calling Card and adaptations of several of her plays. Her work has received awards and selections at script and film festivals, including a Best Stage Play award for What Kind of Woman and an Oxford Script Award for Night Blooming Jasmine. Margalit has two children and lives in New York.
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