Georgi Cherkin

The grandson of the composer and voice teacher Georgi Zlatev-Cherkin, Cherkin was born in Sofia in 1977 and studied piano with Antonina Boneva at the Lyubomir Pipkov National Music School. Study followed with Atanas Kurtev at the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music, then at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Sergio Perticaroli, and during the same period in Salzburg with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling. He has also turned to orchestration of his own: a version of Tchaikovsky's The Seasons for piano and orchestra, arrangements of Beethoven, and an original Galactic Concerto. He holds the Crystal Lyre and the Golden Age awards. He took first prizes at the Pancho Vladigerov competition in Shumen, the Premio Sassari and the Young Musical Talents competition in Sofia, and has played at the Musikhalle in Hamburg, the Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. His transcriptions take in Brahms's Paganini Variations as well, he was one of four soloists in the Jazz meets Classical project given in Sofia and London in 2016 and 2017, and in 2024 he presented the concert spectacle Galactic Fantasy with the Secret Orchestra.