A native New Yorker, composer and author Karen LeFrak has created vibrant, moving musical scores that have been presented in prestigious concert halls across the globe.  She is an ardent champion of musical and literary education for children and has received wide accolades for her children’s books published by Bloomsbury, Random House, and Crown Books.

An avid recording artist, Ms. Lefrak has released eight studio recordings since March of 2021 – the four-volume Interlude, the Days EP, and three of a new four-volume series Awakening – with the final album to be released in May 2023, Tomorrow. These records have been included in hundreds of curated playlists and have been streamed over 21 million times. 

Ms. LeFrak’s works have been commissioned and performed by a wide variety of prominent institutions and artists worldwide including the New York Philharmonic; American Ballet Theatre; Mariinsky and San Francisco Ballets; Shanghai and Miami Symphony Orchestras; and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott; among many others. Her compositions have been heard at esteemed venues across the world including David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Mariinsky Theatre, National Sawdust, Festival Napa Valley, and the White House.

The 2023-24 season holds performances of Sleepover at the Museum with A & A Ballet in Chicago and at the Bravissimo International Festival in Guatemala City in May 2023, while Sleepover will see additional performances scheduled in Nashville and Singapore in 2024. 

During the 2022/23 season, Ms. LeFrak saw performances of Sleepover at the Museum with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C. and Omaha Symphony; a world premiere of Ms. LeFrak’s piano concerto, “Summer,” with Yoonie Han and the Miami Symphony Orchestra; the world premiere of a movement of her guitar concerto “Romántico” with Nadia Kossinskaja and the Miami Symphony Orchestra, among others. 

Of Ms. LeFrak’s over 300 compositions, she has written several powerful orchestral works including a piano concerto, a guitar concerto, the multimedia children's scores Sleepover at the Museum, orchestrated by Bill Ross, and Jake the Philharmonic Dog. Her ballet scores have received wide acclaim including Cake, Pavlovsk, Gentle Memories, and Tous Les Jours. Her scores have been choreographed by Maxim Petrov, Jiří Bubeníček, Gemma Bond, Juliano Nunes, Alexei Kremnev and more. Yoonie Han of the Gloriosa Trio recorded Ms. LeFrak’s solo piano work, Ombres d'été, for Steinway’s Spirio, a highly-respected player piano.  

Ms. LeFrak has introduced children to the worlds of music, dance, and dogs in her four acclaimed children’s books – Jake the Philharmonic Dog, Jake the Ballet Dog, Best in Show, and Sleepover at the Museum, which was named a 2020 International Literacy Association CBC Children's Choice Title. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York Philharmonic performance of Sleepover at the Museum has been included in its "NY Phil Plays On" digital content online, making it available to millions of children around the world.  She has been invited to speak and read at museums and bookstores throughout the United States including the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the New York Public Library. 

Ms. LeFrak is a member of the President’s Council of the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering and she previously served on the New York State Council on the Arts. She received her master’s degree in musicology from Hunter College winning the Dean’s Award in Arts and Humanities for her thesis, “In Search of the New Classics,” which surveyed the commissioning activity of the New York Philharmonic from 1842-1986. She was elected to the Hunter College Hall of Fame in 2010 and was featured in Good Housekeeping's “10 Amazing Women In The Arts Over 50” in 2017. Ms. LeFrak studied composition privately with Robert DeGaetano, Jonathan Anderson, and Daniel Boico. She is married to Richard LeFrak and has two sons, five grandchildren, and two poodles.