Dr. John Cheek
Professor of Music, Applied Piano & Music Theory

Listen to Dr. Cheek
Allegro from Sonata in E-flat Major, K. 282 by W.A. Mozart
Intermezzo in C Major, Op. 119 No. 3 by J. Brahms

John Cheek was appointed at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Fall 1998.  A native of Little Rock, he made his professional debut with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra at age 13 and was guest soloist on more than a dozen occasions.  Dr. Cheek has distinguished himself as top prize-winner in a number of important national and international music competitions sponsored by the National Society of Arts and Letters, the American Music Scholarship Association and the Liederkranz Club of New York.  He also has the distinction of being the highest-ranking American in the 1986 Franz Liszt International Piano Completion held in Budapest.

 Dr Cheek has appeared as soloist and chamber musician in Alice Tully Hall, Weill Hall, Town Hall, Columbia University, Clarion Concerts (NY), the Stamford Civic Center (CT), the University of California (Davis), the Chicago Twentieth Century Music Ensemble’s series at the Harold Washington Library and on tour in Europe and central Asia.  He is co-founder of New York’s Omni Ensemble, an electro-acoustic performing group honored with a prestigious Reader’s Digest Commissioning Grant.  The ensemble has performed on John Schaeffer’s New Sounds (WNYC), The Listening Room (WGXR) and the nationally-syndicated “ITT Salute to the Arts.”

 Dr. Cheek is the author of Douze Etudes of Claude Debussy—Performance Research, among other scholarly works and composer of Big Church Music (broadcast over National Public Radio), City of Peace and Airs for the Omni Ensemble.  He has also written popular songs, a rock musical and music for television advertisement and industrials.

Dr, Cheek hold degrees form Indiana University, SUNY-Stony Brook and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Manhattan School of Music, where he was honored with the Harold Bauer Achievement Award.  His teachers include André LaPlante, Walter Robert, Gilbert Kalish, Constance Keene and Menahem Pressler.

Dr. Cheek recently soloed with the Western Piedmont Symphony Orchestra, playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto #4.  In the spring of 2001 he traveled to Yerevan, Armenia as a Fulbright Scholar, playing concerts of twentieth-century American music and teaching two courses on American music at the Yerevan State Conservatory.

E-mail Dr. Cheek  at Lenoir-Rhyne University or call 828/328-7152.

What the press says!

An excellent pianist with a rare understanding of ensemble playing.
The Stamford Advocate

Cheek has a commanding stage presence and has the necessary technical expertise to make a fine performer, while being gifted with a love of his art that is necessary to make a fine musician.
Arkansas Gazette