Lera Auerbach
Biography Lera Auerbach
Lera Auerbach
Virtuoso pianist and composer Lera Auerbach is one of today’s most sought after and exciting creative voices. Her boldly imaginative and evocative compositions are championed by today's leading musicians, conductors, choreographers, and opera houses. Ms. Auerbach's uniquely personal interpretations of the standard keyboard repertoire are making her a favorite of audiences worldwide.
She regularly appears as soloist in the world’s great halls, and her published oeuvre includes more than 90 works of opera, ballet, symphonic and chamber music. Her creative output is interdisciplinary and encompasses music, literature, and visual art. She has published three volumes of poetry and prose in Russian, contributes regularly to the Best American Poetry blog, writes her own librettos, and has recently been working on a series of gesamtkunstwerk installations.
Theater performances scheduled for the 2012/13 season include "Préludes CV", a full-length ballet by John Neumeier - based on Lera Auerbach’s "24 Preludes for Violoncello and Piano" and "24 Preludes for Violin and Piano", to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Hamburg Ballett. There will also be world premieres of two new ballets – "Faust" by the Staatstheater Nürnberg, with choreography by Goyo Montero (which features Lera Auerbach as pianist on stage), and "Heroes" for the Munich State Ballet, choreographed by Terence Kohler. Auerbach's groundbreaking a-cappella opera "The Blind" will be staged at the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow.
Marking Lera Auerbach's achievement as one of today's most recognized composers, her full-length ballet "The Little Mermaid" is the recent winner of the 2012 ECHO Klassik award, and has already received over 150 performances worldwide. This season, the work will be staged by John Neumeier for the National Ballet of China in Beijing, the Hamburg Ballet, and the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow. Auerbach has recently collaborated with the Netherlands Dance Theatre and resident choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot on "Shine a Light" ballet; with Aszur Barton and the National Ballet of Canada on "Watch Her"; with Goyo Montero and the Nuremberg State Ballet on "Don Juan"; with Tim Plegge on "Momo" for the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe; and with Terence Kohler on "Take Your Time" for the Chinese National Ballet, "11:11" for the Flanders National Ballet, and last season's full-length ballet "Cinderella" for the Finnish National Ballet. The 2012-13 season will also see the premiere of Auerbach's "String Quartet No. 6", commissioned by the Tokyo String Quartet for their farewell tour, and a new viola and piano work to be performed by Kim Kashkashian and Ms. Auerbach on tour.
Other premieres include a string symphony commissioned by the New Century Chamber Orchestra, a concerto for saxophone quartet and choir for the Raschér Saxophone Quartet, and two additional string quartets for the Borromeo String Quartet and Ying String Quartet. Bidding a fond farewell to her tenure as Composer-in-Residence of the Staatskapelle Dresden, Ms. Auerbach is currently Artist-in-Residence for BASF's highly regarded "Kunst und Kultur" program, now in its 91st season, as well as resident composer of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra, the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and the International Verbier Festival, which has commissioned her to write a new symphonic work to commemorate their 20th Anniversary. Recent career highlights include the critically acclaimed premiere of Auerbach's full-scale opera, "Gogol", based on her original stage play. The opera was commissioned by Vienna’s Theater an der Wien and premiered in November 2011. Her residency with the Staatskapelle Dresden in 2011-12 showcased the world premieres of "Requiem - Ode to Peace" conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, and "Post Silentium" conducted by Sakari Oramo. Auerbach's a-capella opera "The Blind" received its world premiere in October 2011 at the Konzerthaus Berlin with the Berliner Kammeroper and Vocalconsort Berlin.
Lera Auerbach's music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, Staatskapelle Dresden, Dresdner Philharmoniker, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Bamberger Symphoniker, and Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, among others, and by such choruses as St. Thomas Boys Choir in New York, St. Paul's Cathedral Boys Choir, Estonian Opera Boys Choir, the Latvian National Choir, and Vienna's Arnold Schoenberg Choir. She regularly collaborates with violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, and Julian Rachlin; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, David Finckel, Gautier Capuçon, and Ani Aznavoorian; violist Kim Kashkashian; and the Tokyo, Borromeo, Artemis, and Jasper string quartets.
Auerbach has been Composer-in-Residence at various international music festivals, including the Marlboro Music Festival, Verbier Festival, Musikfest Bremen, the Pacific Music Festival, Kammermusikfest Lockenhaus, and Les Muséiques Festival. She has also written works for the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Caramoor Music Festival, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, Lucerne Festival, Lincoln Center's White Light Festival, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and was Artist-in-Residence with the Deutschlandfunk Radio.
Lera Auerbach was born in the city of Chelyabinsk at the gateway to Siberia. After writing her first opera at twelve years of age, she was invited for a concert tour to the United States in 1991, where she decided to stay and continue her studies in piano and composition at the Juilliard School in New York. Auerbach has been awarded the prestigious Hindemith Prize by the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany, and Deutschlandfunk’s Förderpreis. She recieved a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship and recently was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
