Georgii Cherkin, (born July 1977, Sofia, Bulgaria) is a Bulgarian pianist.[1]
Georgii Cherkin was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in a family with great music tradition. He started playing the piano and composing at the age of six and the following year he enrolled in the Liubomir Pipkov National Music School in Sofia, where he was a student of Antonina Boneva. In 1996, he was admitted to the Pancho Vladiguerov State Music Academy in Sofia in prof. Atanas Kurtev’s class. A year later, he was also admitted at the prestigious Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he was trained by one of the most renowned music professors in Italy, Sergio Perticaroli, graduating cum laude.
He has performed as a soloist of symphonic orchestras more than 85 times and played in many prestigious concert halls, such as the Auditorio Hall in Rome, Musikhalle in Hamburg, Convention Center in Okinawa, Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York, Invalides Hall in Paris, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, to name a few. During the past few years, he has been awarded numerous prizes for popularizing culture and art in Bulgaria, including “The Crystal Lire”, “The Golden Century”, “The Golden Muse”, and “The Golden Quill” among others. He has also won top prizes at the following international competitions – Pancho Vladigerov in 2003, Premio Sassari (Italy) in 1999, and Young Musical Talents in Sofia, 1994.
Georgii Cherkin’s repertoire includes more than 25 concertos for piano and orchestra, including all the concertos by Rachmaninoff and the most difficult ones of the romantic period, which he has performed as a soloist of the Sofia Philharmonic, the Symphony Orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio, Classic FM M-Tel Orchestra, Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Orquestra de Câmara de Cascais e Oeiras, National Radio Orchestra of Romania, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, under the batons of Emil Tabakov, Georgi Dimitrov, Milen Nachev, Horia Andreescu, Francesco La Vecchia, Shungo Moriyama, Ovidiu Balan, Miguel Grassa–Mora and many others. His concert schedule during the recent years has included a series of very successful piano recitals in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, New York, Seoul, Warsaw, Prague, Sofia, Bratislava etc.
Since young age Georgii Cherkin has also been composing & orchestrating music for symphonic orchestra. He has made numerous orchestrations of famous piano pieces, arranged for piano & orchestra, including Für Elise by Beethoven, The Moonlight Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven), The Seasons (Tchaikovsky) etc. All these pieces were performed in a World Premiere in 2010 with Classic FM MTel Orchestra in "Bulgaria Hall" with live TV & Radio broadcasting. Mr. Cherkin has also composed & arranged music for films, drama and other classical music projects.