lera auerbach
Lera Auerbach is an Austrian-American composer whose catalogue of more than 180 works includes symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets, and choral and chamber music. She is equally active as a conductor, pianist, poet and visual artist, and her work spans music, literature and the visual arts.
Born in Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains, she gave her first public piano performance at six, appeared as a soloist with orchestra at eight and wrote her first opera at twelve. In 1991, while on a concert tour of the United States, she decided to stay in New York. She studied at the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, Columbia University and the Hochschule für Musik Hannover. She later received Austrian citizenship in recognition of her contribution to the country's cultural life.
Her music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Venues include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Vienna Musikverein, Wigmore Hall, and the Salzburg and Lucerne festivals. Leading interpreters of her work include Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Hilary Hahn, Alisa Weilerstein and Kim Kashkashian. Among her best-known works are the ballet The Little Mermaid, created with John Neumeier for the Royal Danish Ballet and since staged by Houston Ballet; the operas Gogol and The Blind; Russian Requiem; ARCTICA (Symphony No. 4), premiered at the Kennedy Center by the National Symphony Orchestra with Auerbach at the piano; and Symphony No. 5, Paradise Lost.
As a conductor, Auerbach increasingly leads performances of her own music. In 2023, the Lera Auerbach Festival at Amare in The Hague marked her 50th birthday; there she conducted the Residentie Orkest in the Dutch premiere of her Fifth Symphony. In 2024/25 she was the subject of a Creative Portrait at the Konzerthaus Berlin. In 2026/27, the Konzerthaus Dortmund presents a Zeitinsel focus on her work, with Auerbach conducting ARCTICA.
As a pianist, she made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2002, performing her own music with Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica. Her honours include the Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.
Auerbach also writes poetry, prose and libretti in Russian and English; her novel Mirror was published in 2026. Her drawings, paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in Vienna and Dortmund. Current projects include the Psalms Project, a cycle of settings of all 150 Psalms.