Lera Auerbach is a poet, visual artist, composer, and concert pianist. Born in Chelyabinsk, Russia, she defected to the U.S. at the age of seventeen, and began studying in New York. She holds degrees in composition from Juilliard and a piano degree from Hanover University in Germany. She has composed numerous works for opera, ballet, and orchestra that have been performed throughout the world, including recent performances at New York's Lincoln Center, Washington's Kennedy Center, and the San Francisco Ballet. Her first English-language poetry collection, Excess of Being, was published in 2015.