Tzvika Pick

Tzvika Pick was an Israeli pop singer, songwriter, composer, and television personality, born on October 3, 1949, and passed away on August 14, 2022. Nicknamed "The Maestro",  he gained widespread fame when he was chosen to play the lead role of Claude in the musical "Hair", which was staged in Israel in 1970.

Henryk (Zvi) Pick was born in Wrocław, Poland, to Jewish parents, Paulina and Borys Pick. His grandfather was the head of a music school, and his uncle was a music professor. At the age of five, Pick began studying classical music. In 1957, his family immigrated to Israel. Pick studied music at the Conservatory of Ramat Gan, and started to perform in local Israeli rock bands at the age of 15. Zvika Pick's career began in the late 1960s when he was a member of Uzi Fox's band, "The Fats and The Thins" ("Hashmenim Veharazim").

Pick was one of Israel's leading pop singers in the 1970s, and was named “Israeli male singer of the year” by Kol Israel every year from 1977 to 1980. During the 1970s, which is considered his golden era, Zvika Pick gained historical appreciation from many fans and became an artist on a major scale, hiring security and police escort for performances. During those years, Zvika Pick released several albums with songs that became timeless hits, such as "Love at the End of the Summer," "The Automatic Dancer," "I Can't Without You," "Not Me, He's the One," "Mary Lou," "I Love You, Leah," and more.

In 1998 Pick wrote the song "Diva"  performed by Dana International, which won the Eurovision Song Contest. He also wrote songs for several other Eurovision contestants. In 2002 he helped write the song "Light a Candle" for Sarit Hadad, who represented Israel in Eurovision 2002. That year, Habima Theater staged a musical called "Mary Lou" based on Pick's old hits. In 2009, this musical was made into the television series "Tamid Oto Chalom" (or "Mary Lou"), directed by Eytan Fox. In 2005, he was appointed as a judge in the third season of the reality music show "Kokhav Nolad" (A Star Is Born) and served as a judge on the show until the seventh season in 2009.

n 1975, he married Mirit Shem Or, the songwriter behind many of his hits. The couple divorced in 1995 and had three children: Benli, a doctor by profession, Sharona, and Daniella, who formed the musical duo "The Pick Sisters." In 2018, his daughter Daniella married American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

In 2018, on the eve of Israel's Independence Day, Pik felt ill during a flight from London to Israel. The plane made an emergency landing in Vienna, where Pik was hospitalized for a cerebral hemorrhage. He was transferred to Israel for further treatment and rehabilitation.

On May 15, 2019, Channel 12 aired Haim Etgar's documentary, "Zvika Pik, The First Interview," in which Pik revealed for the first time what he had been through since the cerebral hemorrhage, including the loss of his Hebrew language skills and the process of relearning the language from scratch.

Zvika Pik lived in Ramat Hasharon. He passed away from a heart attack on August 14, 2022, at the age of 72, at his home. He was buried in the "Morasha" cemetery in Ramat Hasharon, next to his mother's grave.