Lera Auerbach

Born in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on the border of Siberia, Russian-American composer, concert pianist, poet and visual artist Lera Auerbach has become one of today’s most sought after and exciting creative voices. She has published more than 100 works for orchestra, opera and ballet, as well as choral and chamber music.

Lera Auerbach’s intelligent and emotional style has connected her to audiences around the world and her work is championed by today’s leading performers, including violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Vadim Gluzman, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Repin, Daniel Hope, Julian Rachlin, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Dmitry Sitkovetsky; violists Kim Kashkashian and David Aaron Carpenter; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt, David Finckel, Joshua Roman, David Geringas, Ani Aznavoorian, Wendy Warner, and Narek Hakhnazaryan; and singers Zoryana Kushpler, Natalia Ushakova, Martin Winkler, Nikita Storojev and Stella Grigorian, among many others. Auerbach has written eight string quartets that have been championed by the Tokyo, Borromeo, Parker, Jasper, Ying, Peterson, Artemis, Granados and RTÉ Vanbrugh string quartets.

​Auerbach’s works for orchestra are performed by the world’s leading conductors, including Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Vladimir Spivakov, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Andras Keller and Osmo Vänskä.

Choreographers and stage directors such as John Neumeier, Aszure Barton, Goyo Montero, Terence Kohler, Sol León, Paul Lightfoot, Medhi Walerski, Reginaldo Oliveira, Christine Milietz, and John La Bouchardiere have staged Auerbach’s ballets and operas, which have been produced in major theaters on every continent, including the Hamburg State Opera, Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, New York’s Lincoln Center, the National Ballet of Canada, National Ballet of China, the Royal Danish Theater, Nuremberg State Theater, the Finnish National Theater, Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theater, the Netherlands Dance Theatre, and San Francisco Ballet.

​For 2015, Ms. Auerbach is composer-in-residence at the Trans-Siberian Art Festival and the Rheingau Musik Festival in Germany. She has been composer-in-residence with many orchestras and music festivals, including the Staatskapelle Dresden (Germany), São Paulo Symphony (Brazil), Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa (Japan), Concerto Budapest Symphony Orchestra (Hungary), New Century Chamber Orchestra (USA), Verbier Festival (Switzerland), Trondheim Festival (Norway), Marlboro Festival (USA), MusikFest Bremen (Germany), Lockenhaus Festival (Austria) and Pacific Music Festival (Japan).

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 and, in 2013, her first solo exhibition was presented in Norway. Her paintings are often exhibited at performances of her musical work and have 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 American Poetry blog, in her column The Trouble Clef. In recent years Gerard Depardieu, Sergei Yursky and Evgeny Kissin have been reciting her poems in performances. Sergei Yursky also recorded a CD or poetry from her book, “Stairs to Eternity” and wrote the foreword for her “Hanover Notebooks.”

Auerbach often gives poetry readings (in Russian and English), presentations and talks, and master classes on performance and composition, including those at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute, the Open Society Institute in New York, Tokyo University, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The Music Center of Budapest, Hungary and the poetry festival of West Cork, Ireland, as well as music festivals in Verbier, Aspen, Marlboro, Sapporo, Trondheim and others.

Auerbach’ has written two operas. Her opera, Gogol – for which she wrote both the libretto and music–was commissioned by the Theater an der Wien in Vienna and received its critically acclaimed premiere in 2011. This occasion marked the first time a major opera written by a female composer was produced in Vienna. Her groundbreaking sensory-immersive a cappella opera, The Blind, has received productions in Germany, Norway, Russia, the United States and Austria.

​Auerbach has enjoyed a long-standing collaboration with renowned choreographer John Neumeier. Together they have created three three highly popular ballets: Tatiana, The Little Mermaid, and Preludes CV. The most recent, Tatiana (a reimagining of Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin), was premiered in 2014 through a joint commission by the Hamburg State Theater in Germany and the Stanislavsky Theater in Russia. The Little Mermaid, was the winner of a 2012 ECHO Klassik award for Best Music DVD. It also received two Golden Mask awards and has been performed over 300 times worldwide. Auerbach’s first collaboration with Neumeier, Préludes CV, was recently revived to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Hamburg Ballet.

Ms. Auerbach has also collaborated with the Netherlands Dance Theatre and its choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot on Shine a Light; with Goyo Montero on Don Juan and Faust for the Staatstheater Nürnberg; with Azure Barton on Watch Her for the National Ballet of Canada; with Tim Plegge on Momo and Reginaldo Oliveira on Mythos for the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe; and with Terence Kohler on four ballets: Heroes for the Munich State Ballet, Take Your Time for the Chinese National Ballet, 11:11 for the Flanders National Ballet and Cinderella for the Finnish National Ballet.

​Other recent highlights include Auerbach’s oratorio, In Praise of Peace, commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the Verbier Festival, the multilingual Requiem—Dresden Ode to Peace for the Staatskapelle Dresden, the string symphony Memoria de la luz, her Russian Requiem, three violin concertos, a double concerto for violin, piano and orchestra, Symphonies Nos. 1 (Chimera) and 2 (Requiem for a Poet), Gallows Songs for chorus and saxophone quartet, and several symphonic poems: Post silentium, Eterniday and Dreams and Whispers of Poseidon.

​Auerbach has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Hindemith Prize, the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, the German National Radio prize and the ECHO Klassik award, among others. From 2007-2012 Auerbach was a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in Davos. 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 “Modern Renaissance” project.

Auerbach graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degree in composition from the Juilliard School and a post-graduate degree in piano from Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media in Germany. Her work is published exclusively by the Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski. Her music is available on Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, BIS, Cedille and other labels.