Concerto Budapest's series entitled Concerto Open invites some of the most innovative personalities of the age to Hungary. Composer, pianist, poet, painter and visual artist Lera Auerbach was born in Chelyabinsk, but after an opera she wrote at the age of 12 was presented in the United States, decided to pursue her studies at New York's Juilliard School. She has become known primarily through her ballet music, and has been commissioned to compose by a variety of artists, companies and orchestras, including Gidon Kremer, the Royal Danish Ballet, Vadim Repin and Leonidas Kavakos. She has acted as resident composer at a number of German musical centres, while her works have been premièred by many of the world's outstanding orchestras, among them the New York, Tokyo and Dresden Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa and Staatskapelle Dresden.