The American pianist Michael Chertock has fashioned a successful career as an orchestral soloist, collaborating with conductors such as James Conlon, Jaime Laredo, Keith Lockhart, Erich Kunzel and Andrew Litton. His many orchestral appearances include solo performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Naples Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, the Chattanooga Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony and the Dayton Philharmonic. He has toured Asia with the Boston Pops, and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, and made his Carnegie Hall début in 1999 with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Michael Chertock first performed publicly at the age of eleven, and at the age of fourteen he performed on live television in Guam. At seventeen he performed Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Andrew Litton. He has made a number of highly successful recordings, serves as principal keyboardist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and in 2004 was appointed Assistant Professor of piano at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, where he received his Master’s Degree as a student of Frank Weinstock. He has received numerous awards at major competitions, among them the top prize in the 1989 Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition (Brahms Division), and the grand prize in the 1993 St Charles International Piano Competition. He also shared the silver medal in the 1991 World Piano Competition of the American Music Scholarship Association.
