TERRE HAUTE — The people listening to Sam Rotman play classical works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy and Rachmaninoff learn something about the composers and the songs.

“I’ve had people tell me they get a lot out of knowing that,” Rotman said of his introductions to each piece.

His audiences learn about Rotman’s life, too.

The 60-year-old pianist trained at the famed Julliard School in New York City, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He won the International Beethoven Competition in Vienna, Austria.

He’s performed more than 2,100 concerts in 58 countries and on five continents, including shows in Carnegie Hall in New York and the Grand Hall of the Conservatoire in Moscow. He’s recorded four albums — “Piano Portraits of Claude Debussy,” “Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition,” “Rachmaninoff Piano Works” and “The Piano Music of Beethoven.”

Rotman also recorded and released a video encompassing his musical career and his faith — “Sam Rotman, Concert Pianist: The Music and Testimony of a Jew for Jesus.” At most of his performances, Rotman briefly explains his path from his boyhood to Julliard, to his Christianity and his work today.

He’ll perform two concerts in the Wabash Valley — at 7:30 p.m. today in Central Presbyterian Church at 125 N. Seventh St. in Terre Haute; and 7:30 p.m. Saturday at First United Methodist Church at 201 N. Meridian St. in Brazil.

Sometimes Rotman’s concerts are strictly musical experiences. Many of the 16 stops on his upcoming tour of Indiana include churches, and during those shows, he offers a brief testimony of his religious beliefs.

Born and raised by Orthodox Jewish parents who fled eastern Europe during the rise of Nazism, his family regularly followed Jewish traditions and faith, he said. During his time at Julliard, three classmates introduced him to Christianity. Rotman read the New Testament and soon converted. “I came to faith in Jesus Christ, and that was the greatest moment of my life,” he said last month by telephone from Phoenix, where he and his wife Deborah live.

Rotman’s conversion strained the relationship between him and his parents, especially his father. “It was very difficult for my family,” he said.

After his father died in 1995, he found reconciliation with his mother, who also became a Christian at age 91 in 2007. “She’s the one who really introduced me to classical music,” Rotman said of his Czechoslovakian-born mother, who has since passed away.

Though the compositions he performs are not religiously based, Rotman has “found that being a musician has given me unique opportunities to share my faith with others,” he wrote on his website samrotman.com, “and to be a light in the musical world.”

Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.

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