Marina Maximilian

Pardes Katz, jazz clubs and a second place

Marina Maximilian Blumin was born on 15 December 1987 in Dnipropetrovsk, then in the Soviet Union, and arrived in Israel with her parents at the age of three. The family lived in Ramat Gan before settling in Pardes Katz, the working-class neighbourhood of Bnei Brak. Her mother Ella, a classical pianist, taught her the instrument; she sang in a choir, went to Ironi Alef high school in Tel Aviv, and from the age of fifteen was performing in jazz clubs under the guidance of the pianist Rick Birman.

The theatre came at the same time. She appeared at the Cameri in Requiem at fifteen and in The Producers at eighteen, and took part in the Acre Festival in 2005 and 2006. She did not serve in the army — she received a mental-health exemption and instead volunteered teaching voice development at the Ben Shemen Youth Village.

In 2007 she entered the fifth season of Kokhav Nolad, Israel's televised song contest, and reached the final with Boaz Mauda and Shlomi Bar'el. She finished second with 27 per cent of the public vote, which came with a contract at Helicon. Her first releases followed quickly: a duet with Mauda, "Mi Haya Ma'amin", and her own debut single "Sof Sof" in June 2008.

Five albums in two languages

Her recorded career has moved back and forth between English and Hebrew, which is unusual for an artist whose audience is almost entirely Israeli. The debut album Step Into My World arrived in August 2013 in English, trailed by the singles "Two Pigs" in January and "Tango" in April of that year — "Tango" has stayed in the live set ever since. Armonot Ashan followed in 2016 in Hebrew, then Beyachad in 2021, made with her partner Guy Mentash, and Late Bloomer in 2022 back in English.

Alongside the albums she has taken work that widened the audience without softening the material: judging The Four in 2018, twelve episodes of Fauda's third season in 2019 and 2020 as Hila Bashan, the second season of the British-Italian thriller Devils in 2022, and the opening ceremony of the 2017 Maccabiah on 6 July. She has also crossed into club music, releasing "R U 4REAL" with the Guatemalan-American DJ GORDO in February 2023.

A live album drawn from her solo piano show appeared in 2024, and in September that year Galgalatz named her singer of the year — a marker that mattered, given that her singles rarely behave like radio singles.

Rik BaChalal: the album the war produced

Rik BaChalal — roughly, a vacuum in space — came out on 17 December 2025 on Di-Music: eleven tracks, thirty-nine minutes, produced by Mentash with arrangements written alongside Omri Bar. It is her fifth studio album and her third in Hebrew, and she has said plainly that all of it was written after 7 October 2023. Her childhood home in Ramat Gan and the first flat her parents lived in after immigrating were both hit by missiles; in an interview with Ynet in July 2025 she described the family being in therapy since the start of the war and spoke about shielding her two daughters from what was happening outside.

The sequencing is deliberate. The first three tracks — "Rik BaChalal", "Ledaber" and "Kofetz" — are dance records, and the album then drops into quieter, heavier material. "Magia Li Tov", released as a single on 10 July 2025, was made with the Michal Sela Forum and addresses the warning signs of an abusive relationship; the video, directed by Daria Geler, features seven survivors. "Hannah" was written about a kibbutz resident displaced on 7 October. The closing song, "Lo Yodim Klum", is dedicated to Lior Abramov, who was killed at the Nova festival and whose father is the DJ Darwish — a collaborator she now shares a stage with.

The singles were released over more than a year: "Mehakeh LaNes" on 19 September 2024, "HaNeshika HaRishona" on 28 January 2025, then "Magia Li Tov", "Rik BaChalal" on 2 November 2025 and "Ledaber" on the album's release date.

Reviewing it for Walla on 30 December 2025, Asaf Nevo read the record as evidence of maturity in her writing and singled out "Yafa Sheli" as the best thing on it, while arguing that the opening dance tracks lack the sharpness radio wants. Dodi Fatimer, writing in Maariv, described the album as a map of her own recovery. Both landed on the same point: the electronic surface is carrying material that is not light.

Standing in 2026

The album has translated into demand more reliably than into chart positions. The Maximilian Festival — her own one-night, multi-format event, first staged at Hangar 11 in 2022 — returned on 24 and 25 March 2026 at the new Barby in Tel Aviv, and both nights sold out within days. A further date was added at the Black Box at Expo Tel Aviv, billed as the festival's first outing in that room, with a show at the Nahariya cultural hall following on 7 May.

Two dates are currently on sale. On 29 September 2026 she plays Skyline Ridge in Ariel Sharon Park, an open-air site on the reclaimed hill south of Tel Aviv, with doors at 19:30 and the band on at 21:00; the venue has no public transport link, so the promoter is directing ticket-holders to two car parks and a walk. On 31 October she brings the solo piano show to the Modi'in cultural hall at 21:00.

"Ledaber" was still being worked as a single into February 2026, which is roughly how she has always operated — releasing slowly, then playing the songs into the ground live rather than chasing a chart week.

Three shows, one performer

What she offers now is effectively three different evenings under the same name, and the distinction is worth understanding before booking. The band show is the loudest and the longest-standing: four musicians — guitar, keys and laptop, drums and bass, with Omri Bar, who arranged the new album, at the keyboard — running the hits with the new dance tracks folded in. The piano show strips the same catalogue back to her at a grand piano. The festival puts both in one night and adds a joint set with DJ Darwish.

The songs recur across all three formats: "Tango", "Hurricane", "Glow Now", "1990", "Boer Bi HaShinui", "Ola Al HaShulchanot", "Beyachad", "Chazakim Beyachad", "Mehakeh LaNes" and the title track of the new album. Recent listings also put "Ima" in the piano sets.