Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman was born in 1945 in Tel Aviv

Perlman was born in Tel Aviv on August 31, 1945. His parents, Chaim and Shoshana Perlman, came from Poland. He contracted polio at age 4, walks with crutches and plays the violin seated.

At age 3 he heard a violin recital on the radio and wanted to play. A conservatory turned him away as too small, so he taught himself on a toy violin. He later studied with Rivka Goldgart at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv and gave his first recital at age 10.

At 13 he moved to the United States to study at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay. He appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958 and made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1963. He then toured widely and played with major orchestras in America and Europe.

He played the solo in the score of Schindler's List and performed at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. At the start of the new millennium he began to conduct, and he led the Westchester Philharmonic. He joined the faculty of Brooklyn College in 1975 and later taught at Juilliard.

He lives in New York with his wife Toby, also a violinist. They have 5 children.