Internationally-acclaimed pianist Michael Chertock will headline a three-concert piano series at UNC Pembroke.

The series is sponsored by the Music Department and will be held in the Moore Hall Auditorium. Each performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Chertock kicks of the series with a performance on March 30. Chertock has performed with many of the world’s top orchestras, including those of Philadelphia, Toronto, Boston, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Dallas, and Atlanta.

A devoted educator, Chertock leads the piano program at the esteemed College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati.

“His electrifying performances always leave me astonished,” said Mark Tollefsen, assistant professor of piano at UNCP. “We are lucky that Chertock has chosen to perform for this concert some works by George Gershwin, for whom he is one of the world’s great interpreters.”

The recital series continues April 7 featuring Assaf Sommer, an Israeli pianist who teaches at the Jerusalem Conservatory of Music and Dance. The final student of the famed Eugene Istomin, Sommer has shared his talents in venues across the globe, and his program at UNCP will be entirely devoted to compositions by the revered Baroque composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. As an added treat, Sommer has chosen to perform the works on harpsichord.

The piano series concludes on April 28 with a recital performed by Tollefsen, Jae Won Kim, and students in the UNCP music department. Their program includes the complete solo and two-piano works of New York-based composer Meredith Monk, winner of a MacArthur “Genius” grant and the 2015 National Medal of Arts.

“Monk is a groundbreaking modern composer,” says Kim, also a member of the piano faculty at UNCP.

“Her music is wonderfully accessible and uses beautiful harmonies and toe-tapping rhythms.”

For more information about the piano series, contact Mark Tollefsen at (910) 521.6381 or mark.tollefsen@uncp.edu.