Person

Auerbach, Lera

1973-

Lera Auerbach (Russian: Лера Авербах, born Valeria Lvovna Averbakh, Russian: Валерия Львовна Авербах) was born on October 21, 1973, in Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union.

She is a Soviet-born Austrian American classical composer, conductor, and concert pianist. She 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. Lera began composing her music at an early age. She received permission to visit the United States on a concert tour in 1991; although she spoke no English, she decided to stay to pursue her musical career. She graduated from New York's Juilliard School in piano. She also studied comparative literature at Columbia University and earned a piano diploma at the Hochschule für Musik Hannover. Auerbach made her Carnegie Hall debut in May 2002, performing her Suite for Violin, Piano and Orchestra with violinist Gidon Kremer conducting the Kremerata Baltica. She has appeared as a 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.
In 2005, Auerbach received the Hindemith Prize from the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. The same year, she received the Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk and the Bremer Musikfest Prize; she was composer-in-residence in Bremen. She is the youngest composer to be represented by music publisher Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski of Hamburg, Germany. In 2007, she was selected as a member of the Forum of Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.