Elena Bashkirova studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with her father, legendary piano pedagogue Dmitri Bashkirov. She has performed with orchestras including the Munich Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Paris Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra under conductors including Sergiu Celibidache, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Cristoph Eschenbach. An advocate of twentieth-century music, Bashkirova has given several world premieres. In 1998, she founded the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival with a Berlin-based sister festival, Intonations. In 2017, her recording of two Tchaikovsky cycles received an International Classical Music Award in the solo instrument category. In 2018, she received the Ruhr Piano Festival Prize. She recorded Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures in 2020 and an album of Mozart sonatas and fantasies in 2022. Bashkirova holds an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and serves as President of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation in Leipzig.