Eugene Cherkasov has been a member of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra for over 20 years. He was born and trained in Baku, USSR, and started his career after winning a National Competition at the age of eighteen. He first received international acclaim after performing as a soloist and first violinist with the Quartet of Modern Music at the Frankfurt Feste-89 and at Beethovenhaus in Bonn, Germany. At that time he traveled extensively promoting new composers for wide audiences throughout the USSR and abroad. He later served as the concertmaster of several orchestras in Moscow. In 1990 Eugene and his family moved to Mexico, where he performed with the Mexico State Orchestra. Winning the position of first violinist with the Thouvenel String Quartet brought him to the United States in 1991. Eugene has served as concertmaster and appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras in Texas. He has also performed in  festivals in Michigan, Colorado, Texas, Washington, Vermont, Canada and Germany, was a faculty member of the Wintergreen festival in Virginia. Over the past ten years Eugene has participated in various summer festivals in Italy, including Geminiani and Nei Suoni dei Luoghi, where he performed violin-piano recitals with his wife, Larissa. In 2004 Eugene was a soloist with the renowned Ensemble Archi Della Scala  di Milano,  performing Bach and Haydn concertos in France. 

Eugene graduated with honors from the Baku State Conservatory with a Master’s Degree in Violin Performance and Pedagogy. He also obtains an Artistic Diploma and a Doctorate from the Moscow State Conservatory, where he studied with professor S. Kravchenko. Currently Eugene is the Assistant Concertmaster of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and dedicates much of his time to teaching and performing chamber music.