Born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Mikhail Yanovitsky began his piano studies with his Mother, Larisa, and with Marina Wolf at the Leningrad Special Music School for gifted children, and at the age of eighteen entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Mikhail Voskressensky. Shortly after arriving in the US, he won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions (1991), a significant recognition. The winner of many awards, including the First Prize in the Piano Concerto Competition in Cantù, Italy (which culminated in a recital in Milan's Salle Verdi), he also won the Miriam Klausner Competition at the Hampton Summerfest in Long Island, Pro Piano in New York, and two coveted Gina Bachauer Piano Scholarships for graduate studies at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Seymour Lipkin. After defending his thesis on the piano music of Scriabin, Dr. Yanovitsky completed a Doctoral degree at Temple University in 2002, where he worked with Harvey Wedeen, and joined the faculty at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago as an Assistant Professor.

Both his stunning New York debut in 1991 and his critically acclaimed Kennedy Center debut were presented under the auspices of Young Concert Artists, where Dr. Yanovitsky was the most frequently re-engaged artist on the roster. And as the recipient of the 1993 Aaron and Irene Diamond Soloist Prize for Young Concert Artists, he performed with the New York Chamber Orchestra with Gerard Schwarz conducting.

Dr. Yanovitsky's other major solo orchestral appearances include: the San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas, the Jupiter Symphony, the Moscow Philharmonic, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Cape Town Symphony, the Toho Gakuen Orchestra conducted by Leon Fleisher at Casals Hall in Tokyo, the Little Orchestra Society at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, and most recently, the Shanghai Symphony and Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Ignat Solzhenitsyn.

In addition to performing recitals in numerous European countries as well as Mexico, Israel, and South Africa, Dr. Yanovitsky has been concertizing in 33 of the 50 states in the U.S. and was a featured soloist with the Pusan Philharmonic in Korea, the Montevideo Symphony (Uruguay), the Estonian National Symphony, and the Greek National Orchestra. He has conducted master classes throughout the U.S., Europe, Russia, Israel, and Japan.

In 2001, Dr. Yanovitsky joined the roster of Steinway Artists.