Elena Bashkirova is a native of Moscow and a graduate of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she studied with her father, celebrated pianist and teacher Dmitri Bashkirov.
Elena Bashkirova intensely studies and performs Classical-Romantic repertoire as well as music of the 20th century; her musical creativity has been strongly influenced by working together with such artists as Pierre Boulez, Sergiu Celibidache, Christoph von Dohnanyi, and Michael Gielen.
In 1998, Elena Bashkirova founded the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, of which she is artistic director. Taking place every year in September, the festival has become one of the pillars of cultural life in Israel. Moreover, since 2012, its partner festival, intonations, has been held every year in April at the Berlin Jewish Museum.
Bashkirova’s Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival Ensemble carries the Festival’s artistry far beyond Israel’s borders by making appearances in renowned chamber music series in Berlin, Paris, London, Salzburg, Vienna, Buenos Aires, and Sao Paolo as well as at international summer festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, Verbier Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, George Enescu Festival (Bucharest), and the Beethovenfest in Bonn.
In 2018, Elena Bashkirova was the recipient of the annual Ruhr Piano Festival Prize and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ben Gurion University of the Negev.