Pianist Konstantza Chernov was born on January 2, 1973 in Sofia, Bulgaria. From a family of non-musicians, she showed intense interest in music at an early age, and began her formal piano studies at the age of seven. In 1986 she won first prize at the Svetoslav Obretinov Bulgarian National Piano Competition. That same year she appeared as a solo performer on Bulgarian National Television's "The Magic Present" television program. The following year she continued her early successes by winning first place in the Dimitar Nenov Bulgarian National Piano Competition.
At the age of nineteen, Konstantza entered the Vladigerov Convservatory, where she pursued her piano studies with Stella Dimitrova. In the same period, she was a participant at the Venice Piano Festival which included performances in the Schola Grande de San Giovanni Evangelista. In 1995 she came to the United States to attend Mannes College of Music (where she studied with Arkady Aronov), and in 1996 she transferred to Queens College (CUNY), where she studied with Morey Ritt. She received both her B.M. and M.A. degrees from Queens in 2002.
While at Queens, Konstantza was extremely active as a performer. She played in many chamber music concerts and appeared with the orchestra twice - once as a member, performing the piano part in Copland's "Clarinet Concerto", and once as a concerto soloist herself, performing Ravel's G Major concerto. She received over a dozen honors from Queens including several Chamber Music Live awards, the Mark Kyrkostas Award (twice), two Rathaus Family Memorial Awards, and The Presser Scholarship. In addition to her piano studies, Konstantza proved herself to be no mean scholar (both academically and musical/theoretically), and graduated magna cum laude.
A promoter of modern music, she recently performed works by Robert Cuckson and Mark Kyrkostas, and she gave the world premiere performance of Martín Kutnowski's revised version of "Postcards".