Founded in 1945, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, SKO) sees itself as a cultural institution with a dual role. The vision of the musicians and their three artistic leaders – Principal Conductor Thomas Zehetmair, Artistic Partner Jörg Widmann and Managing Director and Artistic Director Markus Korselt – is to preserve tradition while also setting standards for the future in terms of sound and programming. The tension between these two poles is where the SKO draws its creative energy. The rich repertoire spanning the centuries, from Baroque to composition commissions, also includes exuberant genre cross-overs with jazz and electronic music in exciting formats and projects close to the audience. This range makes it one of the most accomplished ensembles in the world of music.

The program encompasses about 90 concerts each year, including up to three intercontinental tours and performances on the major stages. The orchestra presents itself both as “pure SKO” in its regular line-up of 17 strings as well as a larger ensemble for masterworks from the Classical and Romantic periods.

The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra is constantly discovering new creative fields in the ever-changing area of digitization. Since 2018 innovative projects featuring virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and hologram concerts have been created which broaden the classical foundation of the orchestra and offer the audience new artistic experiences. With its award-winning education program "SKOhr-Labor" for children and young people of all backgrounds, the SKO makes a vital contribution to the musical culture of future generations.

Motivated by the desire to be more sustainable, in 2022 the SKO became Germany’s first climate-neutral orchestra. The orchestra made the transition from sheet music to tablets at the same time, also a first among Germany’s orchestras. In 2023, the first releases appeared on the orchestra’s own, newly founded label SKO Records, featuring music by Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schönberg, Bartók and John Adams.

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A renaissance artist for modern times, Lera Auerbach is a widely recognized conductor, pianist, and composer. She is also an award-winning poet and an exhibited visual artist. All of her work is interconnected as part of a cohesive and comprehensive artistic worldview.

Lera Auerbach has become one of today’s most sought-after and exciting creative voices. Her performances and music are featured in the world’s leading stages – from Vienna’s Musikverein and London’s Royal Albert Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center.

Auerbach’s exquisitely crafted, emotional, and boldly imaginative music reached global audiences. Orchestral collaborations include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Munich’s Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Staatskapelle Dresden, and Vienna’s ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester, among many others. Auerbach’s works for orchestra are performed by the world’s leading conductors, including Manfred Honeck, Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Osmo Vänskä, Hannu Lintu, and Marin Alsop, to mention only a few.

During the 22-23 season, Lera Auerbach performed concerts with Hilary Hahn at Wigmore Hall in London and Boulez Saal in Berlin. She also conducted Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony with Enescu Philharmonic in the subscription series, as well as played and conducted Mozart’s Piano Concerto K466. 

Other recent season highlights also included WienModern’s 3.5-hour production of Demons & Angels with Auerbach as conductor. Washington D.C.’s National Symphony premiered her 4th Symphony  “ARCTICA” – a work commissioned by the National Geographic Society.  Also, her Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra “Diary of a Madman”  commissioned by the Munich Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, received its global premieres with cellist Gautier Capuçon.

Her 4th Violin Concerto “NYx: Fractured Dreams” was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic with Alan Gilbert and Leonidas Kavakos, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra premiered her symphonic poem Eve’s Lament with Marin Alsop. In 2022, the Nuremberg State Philharmonic presented the world premiere of Symphony No. 5 “Paradise Lost” conducted by Joana Mallwitz, and her Symphony No. 6 ‘Vessels of Light,’ a commission of Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, was unveiled in Lithuania as part of the city’s Cultural Capital of Europe celebrations and received its American premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 19, 2023.

Amare at the Hague presented a two-week Auerbach Festival in October 2023, including all aspects of her artistic offerings, conducting, piano performance, composition, poetry, and visual art.

Her music is championed and recorded by today’s most prominent classical performers, including violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt, David Finckel; violists Kim Kashkashian, Nobuko Imai, and Lawrence Power, and many others.

Auerbach is equally prolific in literature and the visual arts. She incorporates these forms into her professional creative process, often simultaneously expressing ideas visually, in words, and through music. She has published three books of poetry in Russian, and her first English-language book, Excess of Being – in which she explores the rare form of aphorisms. Her next book, an illustrated work for children, A is for Oboe, published by Penguin Random House, won Audiofile Best Audiobook 2022. She is the recipient of the 2021 Marsh Hawk Press – Robert Creely Memorial Award for her English poetry manuscript “Morning Music”.

Auerbach has been drawing and painting all her life as part of her creative process. Her visual art is exhibited regularly, included in private collections, and represented by leading galleries.

Lera Auerbach holds multiple degrees from the Juilliard School in New York and the Hannover University of Music, Drama, and Media in Germany. Her teachers include Milton Babbitt, Rosalyn Tureck, Joseph Kalichstein, and Einar Steen-Nøkleberg.  The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, selected her in 2007 as a Young Global Leader, and since 2014, she has served as a Cultural Leader.  Boosey and Hawkes / Sikorski publish her music, and recordings are available on ECM, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Sony Classical, Alpha Classics, BIS, Cedille, and many other labels.