Lera Auerbach

Lera Auerbach (, born Valeria Lvovna Averbakh, ; October 21, 1973) is a Soviet-born Austrian-American classical composer, conductor and concert pianist. Early life and education Auerbach was born to a Jewish family in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Ural Mountains. Her mother was a piano teacher, many of whose ancestors had also been musicians. She also studied comparative literature at Columbia University and earned a piano diploma at the Hochschule für Musik Hannover. Performances Auerbach made her Carnegie Hall debut in May 2002, performing her own Suite for Violin, Piano and Orchestra with violinist Gidon Kremer conducting the Kremerata Baltica. She has appeared as solo pianist at such venues as the Great Concert Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Tokyo Opera City, Lincoln Center, Herkulessaal, Oslo konserthus, Chicago’s Theodore Thomas Orchestra Hall and the Kennedy Center. Compositions Auerbach’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by a wide array of artists, orchestras, choirs and ballet companies including Gidon Kremer, the Kremerata Baltica, David Finckel, Wu Han, Vadim Gluzman, the Tokyo, Kuss, Parker and Petersen String Quartets, the SWR and NDR symphony orchestra