He started playing piano at the age of five under the tutelage of Leah Zelikhman, and studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Alexandra Zhukovsky (a pupil of Sergei Tarnowsky), Grigory Sokolov, and Alexander Ikharev, graduating summa cum laude in 1985.
He gave his first full-length piano recital in 1978, and made his orchestral debut with the Saint Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Vladislav Chernushenko in 1984.
After his permanent move to the United States in 1990, he studied with Russell Sherman at New England Conservatory in Boston, where he earned an Artist Diploma in 1992 and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1999.
He has performed under the baton of Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Karsten Andersen, Keith Lockhart, Jonathan McPhee, Klauspeter Seibel, and Vassily Sinaisky.
His concerts and recordings have been reviewed by The New York Times,[5][6][8][9][10] The Boston Globe,[11][12][13][14] Los Angeles Times, Asahi Shimbun, BBC Music Magazine,[15][16] International Piano,[17] Fanfare, American Record Guide, Musicweb-International,[18][19][20][21][22] and other publications.