A child prodigy in her homeland of Georgia, Poddubnaya was only 15 when she went to St. Petersburg to study at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory from which she went earned undergraduate and graduate degrees, including a doctorate with distinction in piano performance in 1976. Irina Kugucheva and Boris Lysenko were her principal teachers.

Professor Poddubnaya soon established herself as one of the continent’s foremost keyboard artists and piano teachers. In 2005, the Bulgarian government gave her the Golden Muse and Saint Sofia awards, and in 2008 she was named an “Honored Artist” by the All-Russia Music Society founded by legendary pianist and teacher Anton Rubenstein in 1859.

In demand as a juror at international piano competitions, she also keeps a busy schedule of teaching and performing in Russia, Western Europe and the United States. Last month she presented two different solo programs in Moscow and another in Rostov-on-Don as well as a chamber recital in St. Petersburg. At one of the Moscow recitals, an all-Chopin program, she was called back for an unprecedented nine encores.

A charismatic teacher as well as performer, Poddubnaya brings her confidence, authority and vitality to master classes in Russia, Bulgaria, Western Europe and the United States where she is Professor of Piano at the Long Island Conservatory of Music and Visiting Professor at the Portland Conservatory of Music.

In 2004, Poddubnaya co-founded the Portland Conservatory’s International Piano Festival and in 2007 she established the Music without Borders International Piano Festival at Gould Academy in Bethel where young American and European pianists engage in intensive study with this master teacher.

Tickets for the concert are $16 for adults, $14 for seniors and may be purchased online at www.francocenter.org or by calling 207-689-2000. They may also be purchased at the Franco Center box office from noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Students are admitted at no charge. Music teachers acting as chaperones for groups of students are invited to contact the Franco Center to arrange to have their ticket prices waived.