At seven, Serge Nikolay Martinchuk began his piano studies at a music school in the Ukraine. By age 16 he graduated with honors and moved to the United States. Since moving to the US he has studied piano with Vitally Margulis and Walter Ponce, and has taken first place in the Pasadena (California) Piano Competition and was a prizewinner in the Los Angeles Liszt Competition. He has participated in master classes of Lev Vlasenko—former chair of the Tchaikovsky Competition, Leon Fleisher and Jerome Lowenthal. Martinchuk’s performances have run on television, including a performance of Brahms' Paganini Variations, and earlier this month he performed Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto with the West Coast Symphony, which was aired on central coast classical radio station 93.7 KDB.

Martinchuk received his Master of Music degree in piano performance from UCLA. He is currently finishing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance under the guidance of Paul Berkowitz at UCSB. His dissertation deals with the Moments Musicaux Op. 16 of Rachmaninoff.

Martinchuk has taught piano at Master's College in Santa Clarita and Westmont College in Santa Barbara and currently holds a teaching assistantship at UCSB. He was asked to join the keyboard faculty at California State University, Fullerton on a part-time basis in the Fall of 2001.