French impresario Émile Audiffred, born in Toulon in southern France, began a musical career singing in Marseille in 1912 before going to Paris where he joined the group Concert Mayol. He appeared in various revues with Félix Mayol at the Petit Casino and recorded several songs with Pathé. By 1920 he was hired to work as a “tenorino de charme” for bigger revues at the Ambassadeur and the Palace; he performed in the revue “Toutes les Femme” with Harry Pilcer and Polaire. He also sang tenor in various Viennese operettas of Offenbach at “Théâtres des Bouffes” and at the Casino de Trouville. Besides singing, he created lyrics for many composers, including Vincent Sotto and Georges Sellers. During 1924 -1931, as director of the Théâtre de l’Empire in Paris, he signed an agreement with the New York City Hippodrome enabling American stars to perform in France. During this period, he presented ambitious music hall and circus shows and brought the first Jazz Orchestras to appear in France, such as Jack Hyton’s and Ray Ventura’s. He also managed the casinos at Trouville and Enghein les Bains. In 1931 he founded a syndicate for French impresarios and became its first president. In the 1930s, he started the Agence Audiffred and was on the lookout for new talent. He organized many tours and “café concert” appearances for such stars as Josephine Baker, Maurice Chevalier and Tino Rossi. He hired Félix Marouani in 1934, and in 1936 they began a four-year partnership. In this interval he also began creating and producing three successful “opérettes Marseillaises,” two of which starred Mireille Ponsard; he married her (his second marriage) in 1936. Ponsard would be the first actress to interpret the role of “Fanny” in Marcel Pagnol’s film of that title. Right before the war, Audiffred discovered Yves Montand in Marseille and introduced him to Édith Piaf. After the Liberation Montand and Piaf both performed at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. In 1942, Audiffred handed the operation of the Agence to his son Roger by his first marriage. Audiffred spent the Occupation in the free zone as a producer but his business was blocked in 1944 by the German propaganda department. After the war in 1946, he began producing circus shows in Paris and Brussels. He died of a heart attack in Auvers-Saint-Georges, having just written and produced his last operetta, "Croisière d'Amour." Agence Audiffred continued in business until 1971.

Lera Auerbach (Russian: Лера Авербах, born Valeria Lvovna Averbakh, Russian: Валерия Львовна Авербах) was born on October 21, 1973, in Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union.

She is a Soviet-born Austrian American classical composer, conductor, and concert pianist. She was born to a Jewish family in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Ural Mountains. Her mother was a piano teacher, many of whose ancestors had also been musicians. Lera began composing her music at an early age. She received permission to visit the United States on a concert tour in 1991; although she spoke no English, she decided to stay to pursue her musical career. She graduated from New York's Juilliard School in piano. She also studied comparative literature at Columbia University and earned a piano diploma at the Hochschule für Musik Hannover. Auerbach made her Carnegie Hall debut in May 2002, performing her Suite for Violin, Piano and Orchestra with violinist Gidon Kremer conducting the Kremerata Baltica. She has appeared as a solo pianist at such venues as the Great Concert Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Tokyo Opera City, Lincoln Center, Herkulessaal, Oslo Konserthus, Chicago's Theodore Thomas Orchestra Hall and the Kennedy Center.
In 2005, Auerbach received the Hindemith Prize from the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. The same year, she received the Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk and the Bremer Musikfest Prize; she was composer-in-residence in Bremen. She is the youngest composer to be represented by music publisher Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski of Hamburg, Germany. In 2007, she was selected as a member of the Forum of Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Augener & Co. was a music-publishing business, founded in London, in 1855. It was established by George Augener (1830–1915), a German.

In the late 19th century, Augener & Co.'s catalogue contained about 6,000 works, of which nearly 1,000 were cheap volumes; among these was a comprehensive collection of pianoforte classics edited by Ernst Pauer, as well as an important series of educational works edited by him, by John Farmer, and other well-known musicians. They also published The Monthly Musical Record (circulation about 6000), a journal publishing articles in English musical literature by prominent contributors.

In 1910, after Augener’s retirement, Schott and Co. Ltd. acquired the company, but was expropriated at the outbreak of World War I (1914). However, Schott retained the copyright to the editions they had previously acquired. In 1960–1961, the firm acquired the catalogues of UK publishers Joseph Weekes and Joseph Williams. In 1962, Augener & Co. was sold to Galaxy Music of New York and became a division of Galaxy's UK subsidiary, Galliard Ltd.

Born at Lodève, he studied at the Montpellier Conservatory, then at the Paris Conservatoire (1913) and with Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum (1914–16). He became acquainted with Satie and Cocteau, under whose influence he and five other young French composers (including Milhaud, Honegger, and Poulenc) formed the group Les Six as a reaction against the influence of Wagner and Debussyan impressionism on French music.
During the 1920s Auric wrote several pieces for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, notably Les Matelots (1925), and was one of the pianists in the first performance of Stravinsky's Les Noces. His piano sonata (1930–31) shows the considerable influence that Stravinsky had on his work. His film score for Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète (1929) marked the beginning of his important contribution to this field, which included the scores for René Clair's À nous la liberté (1932), Cocteau's La Belle et la bête (1946), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), and Moulin Rouge (1952).
After World War II Auric turned again to ballet, his later works including Phèdre (1950) and Coup de feu (1952). He also held a number of administrative posts, among them director of the Paris Opéra and of the Opéra-Comique (1962–68), in which he helped to re-establish French operatic life.