Alma Deutscher, born 2005, is a composer, violinist and pianist. She started playing the piano when she was two years old and the violin when she was three. Soon afterwards she started improvising simple melodies on the piano. Her attempts at composition started aged four, when she began writing an opera about a pirate called Don Alonzo.
When she was 6, she composed her first full piano sonata, and at 7 she composed a very short opera called The Sweeper of Dreams. There followed various compositions for violin, piano, and chamber ensembles. Aged 9, Alma wrote a concerto for violin and orchestra, which she premiered in 2015. Her first piece for symphony orchestra, Dance of the Solent Mermaids was also premiered in 2015.
Aged 10, Alma composed a full length opera, Cinderella. A chamber version of the opera was performed in Israel in 2015. A fuller version was premiered in Vienna in 2016, under the patronage of Maestro Zubin Mehta, to standing ovations and international critical acclaim. The English language premiere took place in December 2017 in San Jose, California, and in January 2018, the Vienna State Opera premiered a special version for children.
Aged 12, she completed her first piano concerto, and played it in Austria alongside her violin concerto, to the jubilation of the public and the press.
Alma has featured prominently in the international press and media. In 2017 she was the subject of an hour long BBC Documentary and a CBS 60 Minutes documentary. Her YouTube channel has more than 6 million views.
As a soloist on both violin and piano, Alma has performed in England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, Uruguay, USA, Israel, Japan and China. She has also performed in prestigious events, including Google's Zeitgeist, alongside speakers such as Physicist Stephen Hawking.