For over 25 years, the Classical Concert Series has presented stellar musicians in fulfilling its mission: stimulate, support, and enrich the community's cultural life by presenting concerts featuring artists of national and international stature.

This season will open the season with a performance by the 2001 Van Cliburn-winning pianist Olga Kern on Monday, Sept. 22.

The first woman to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 30 years, Kern was born into a family of musicians with direct links to Tchaikovsky and Rachmanivov. She began studying piano at the age of 5. Her teachers include Evgeny Timakin at the Moscow Central School, Sergei Dorensky at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and Boris Petrushansky at Accademia Pianistica Incontri col Maestro in Italy.

Immediately following her New York recital dbut at Carnegie Hall's new Zankel Hall in 2004, she was invited back to play a return engagement in Carnegie Hall's main Stern Auditorium only 11 days later.

The second concert will feature the Jupiter String Quartet Monday, Nov. 10. The quartet has been earning an impressive list of awards for such a young chamber group. They have won the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Banff International String Quartet Competition, Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Jerome L. Greene Foundation Prize, which sponsored their debut at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, and Chamber Music American recently awarded them the Cleveland Quartet Award, a prize which "honors and promotes a rising young string quartet whose artistry demonstrates that it is in the process of establishing a major career."

The Balsom Ensemble, featuring British trumpeter Alison Balsom, will perform Monday, Feb. 23. A highly acclaimed artist, Balsom was named Best Young British Performer at the 2006 Classical Brit Awards and was honored with the Classic FM Listener's Award in the 2006 Gramophone Awards.

Recording exclusively for EMI Classics, Balsom has performed with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the LA Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, and made her New York debut at "Free for All at the Town Hall." She also received the Feeling Musique Prize for quality of sound in the fourth Maurice Andr International Trumpet Competition. The Balsom Ensemble consists of trumpet, violin, cello, and harpsichord/piano, and performs a wide variety of works from across the centuries.

The series will conclude Monday, March 16, with a performance by the Amelia Piano Trio, which is among the most exciting young chamber ensembles to appear in the last decade. Called "remarkable" by Strings and "exemplary" by The Strad, the group has quickly become one of its generation's most sought-after ensembles.

In 2003, National Public Radio asked the group to be the Young Ensemble-in-Residence, which put them firmly in the foreground of classical music in America. The trio has performed all over the world, and in addition, members of the trio have toured with Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Project.

The subscription price to the 2008-09 Classical Concert Series is $80 per person for all four concerts. All concerts will begin at 8 p.m. at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines, with the doors opening at 7:30 p.m.

In addition to the concerts, The Jefferson Inn is sponsoring the series by offering a pre-concert dinner in their restaurant, One Fifty West, located less than a block from the Sunrise Theater at 150 W. New Hampshire Avenue. For $35 per person (tax and gratuity included), concert-goers will receive a meal and choice of the prime parking places. Reservations for the dinners are required and can be made only by calling the Arts Council at 692-4356.

To purchase a CCS subscription, pick up a brochure at the Arts Council offices at Campbell House (482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines) or call 910-692-4356. For additional information and questions about CCS, call 910-692-4356 or visit www.artscouncil-moore.org.