Lera Auerbach

Russian-American composer and concert pianist Lera Auerbach is one of today’s most sought after and exciting creative voices. Auerbach’s intelligent and emotional style has connected her to audiences around the world and her work is championed by today’s leading perform- ers, conductors, choreographers, choirs and opera houses, including the Theatre an der Wein, New York’s Lincoln Center, the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., Stanislavsky Theater in Moscow, the Hamburg Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Netherlands Dance Theater, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of China; choreographers, John Neumeier, Aszure Barton, Goyo Montero, Terence Kohler, Sol León, Paul Lightfoot, Tim Plegge and Medhi Walerski; violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Dmitry Sitkovetsky; violist Kim Kashkashian; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt, David Finckel, Joshua Roman, Clive Greensmith, David Geringas, Ani Aznavoorian, Wendy Warner, and Narek Hakhnazaryan; the Artemis, Borromeo, Tokyo, and Ying string quartets and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Her orchestral works have been brought to life by Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Andris Nelsons, Vladimir Jurowski, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Spivakov, Osmo Vänskä, Andrey Boreyko, and many others.

In 2015, Auerbach was composer-in-residence at the Trans-Siberian Art Festival and the Rheingau Musik Festival in Germany. Past residencies include the Staatskapelle Dresden, Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, Norway’s Trondheim Festival, the São Paulo Symphony in Brazil, and Marlboro Music Festival in the USA. Awards include the Hindemith Prize, a Golden Mask, Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, German National Radio prize and the ECHO Klassik award. In 2011, her opera GOGOL marked the first time a major opera written by a female composer was produced in Vienna.

Auerbach is equally prolific in literature and the visual arts (especially painting and sculpture) and incorporates these forms into her professional creative process, simultaneously expressing  ideas visually, in words, and through music. She has published three books of poetry in Russian and her first English-language book, “Excess of Being” – in which she explores the difficult form of the aphorism – was published by Arch Street Press in 2015. Her visual art has been included in several exhibitions, is often exhibited at performances of her musical work, and has been reproduced in magazines, CDs and books. As a poet, Ms. Auerbach has been long established and was named Poet of the Year in 1996 by the International Pushkin Society in New York. Her poetry and prose has been included in various anthologies and high school textbooks. She is the author of several librettos and is a regular contributor to the Best Ameri- can Poetry blog through her column, The Trouble Clef.

From 2007-2012 Auerbach was a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in Da- vos. Today, she serves the WEF as a Cultural Leader, giving presentations around the world on Borderless Creativity. The LeraArt Foundation, a 501c3 organization, was established in her name in 2015 and seeks to create an artist-centric paradigm for composers through its “Mod- ern Renaissance” project.

Auerbach was raised in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on the border of Siberia. She gradu- ated with bachelor’s and master’s degree in composition from the Juilliard School and a post- graduate degree in piano from Hanover University. Her work is published exclusively by the Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski. Her music is available on Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, BIS, Cedille and other labels.