Grand Piano Series has ended its regular season but, once again, it isn’t taking the summer off.

To keep year-round residents entertained through the off-season, Director of Education and Community Engagement Konstantin Soukhovetski will continue the same interactive soirées for which he’s become noted before and since moving to Naples.

An internationally renowned educator and pianist, Soukhovetski is deeply committed to music education for all ages. In that role, he’s spun the stories behind the scores in countless masterclasses, interactive lecture/performances and lifelong learning courses at institutions from the Bronx School for Music to Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and his alma mater, The Juilliard School.

All proceeds from his summer program’s ticket sales go to support the series’ free community programs for youth and adults, at public schools, senior centers and the Guadalupe Center of Collier County.

The first of this summer’s five Narrative Musicales is, as its title suggests, an hourlong, intermission-less musicale enlivened with media and gossipy tales of the composers’ lives and times.

Soukhovetski’s summer spotlight shines first on fresh-faced young pianist Dmitry Yudin, 24, already a recognized worldwide soloist and laureate of several competitions — most recently as second prizewinner in the prestigious Geza Anda International Piano Competition in Zurich, Switzerland.

From an early age, little Dmitry apparently shared an aptitude for both music and math with his grandfather, an abstract mathematician who reveled in playing Beethoven sonatas on his upright piano.

The lad soon graduated from conducting the music on his parents’ CD collection to pursuing a 13-year education at the Moscow Gnessins School of Music. He now travels from a home base in New York, where he’s studying on a full scholarship at the Manhattan School of Music.

“I’ve come to love jazz here,” said this artist who delights in contrasts. “It brings a spontaneity that we sometimes ignore when we play classical music. I became so fond of it that I was thinking of switching from classical to jazz.”

But when Yudin performs in Bonita Springs, his program will lean into the charm of Old World classical, embracing the contrasts of Viennese elegance and revolutionary Russian Romanticism.

“In Rondo in A minor,” he said, “Mozart is ahead of his time and even his own style. He’s entering the Romantic era with this piece, which is creative, with lots of unexpected twists and turns. So is Nikolai Medtner’s music, which follows Mozart in the program, elusively switching moods and always putting us in a new world.

“One of my favorite composers, Medtner is very Russian in his use of folk melodies, but also very advanced for his time in dissonant harmonics. He combines the past and the future at once. It’s very elusive and unpredictable music.”

Though often underplayed, Medtner’s enchanting “Six Fairy Tales” provides a perfect vehicle for Yudin’s imagination.

The Miami International Piano Festival called his performance of them unforgettable.

“Changing seamlessly between intimate tenderness and powerful intensity,” it wrote, “he conjured up miniature magical worlds, transporting the audience with a vibrant palette of colors.”

“Then we have Prokofiev’s moody Sonata No. 4, also underrated and not played nearly enough,” the pianist continued.

Playing on yet another contrast, Yudin’s program shifts at last from Prokofiev’s brooding Russian piece to Gyorgy Cziffra’s wildly extravagant transcription of Strauss’ “The Blue Danube.”

“It’s good for the program and for the audience,” said Yudin. “Everyone will leave in a good mood!” ¦

Narrative Musicales: Dmitry Yudin, Pianist

· When: 7:00 p.m. June 19
· Where: St. Leo Auditorium, 28290 Beaumont Road, Bonita Springs
· Tickets: Single tickets are $46, or $50 at the door. Students are free.
· More Info: grandpianoseries.org or call Grand Piano Series at 469-333-3231