Lera Auerbach is one of today’s most sought-after and exciting creative voices. She is not only among the world’s leading composers but also an impressive virtuoso pianist, conductor, visual artist, and writer. Auerbach was born in the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia. At the age of 17, she left the Soviet Union to a new life in New York, studying both composition and piano at The JuilliardSchool. She also graduated from the Hannover University of Music, Drama, and Media in Germany. Auerbach’s published catalogue comprises more than 130 works for orchestra, opera, and ballet as well as works for choir and chamber music. Her music is performed by leading soloists such as Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Vadim Gluzman, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Repin, Daniel Hope, Kim Kashkashian and Gautier Capuçon. Conductors that have performed her orchestral compositions include Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Edward Gardner, Osmo Vänskä, and Alan Gilbert, among many others.
She has collaborated with choreographers and stage directors such as John Neumeier, Aszure Barton, Goyo Montero, Terence Kohler, Sol Leon, Paul Lightfoot, Reginaldo Oliveira, and Christine Mielitz. Production of her large scale works have taken place at the Hamburg State Opera, Theater an der Wien, Lincoln Center in New York, the Canadian State Ballet, the National Ballet of China, the Royal Danish Theater, the Nuremberg State Theater, the Finnish National Opera, the Stanislavsky Theater in Moscow, the Nederlands Dans Theater, the San Francisco Ballet Theater, and the Salzburg State Theater. Lera Auerbach has been drawing and painting all her life as part of her creative process and in 2009 began sculpting. Her visual art is exhibited regularly, included in private collections, and it is represented by leading galleries. She has published several books of poetry in Russian as well as Excess of Being, a collection of aphorisms about life as an artist.
