Two grand pianos. Four renowned pianists. Eight nimble hands, sliding across the ivories.

The second annual “Leaves of Gold” concert, a fundraiser for the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, is bringing together acclaimed classical pianists for one night of music.

Artistic Advisor to the festival Jon Kimura Parker is performing with Anna Polonsky, Adam Stern and Orion Weiss on Monday, Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. at Orcas Center.

“The program is going to feature every possible combination you can think of with four pianists and two pianos,” Parker said. “The festival is such a flurry of activity … Everybody feels like the balloon popped when the festival is over. I look forward so much to this concert as a chance to come back to Orcas and make music during this one special night.”

Parker’s career has taken him from Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House to the Canadian Arctic and war-torn Sarajevo. He is Professor of Piano at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. Parker is also an Officer of The Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian honor.

Polonsky has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. In 2006 she took part in the European Broadcast Union’s project to record and broadcast all of Mozart’s keyboard sonatas. In 2007, Polonsky performed a Carnegie Hall solo recital, inaugurating the Emerson Quartet’s Perspectives Series. She is a member of the newly formed Schumann Trio. In addition to performing, Polonsky serves on the piano faculty of Vassar College. She has performed on Orcas in the past at the Chamber Music Festival.

At age 27, Weiss is already a sought-after soloist. He has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra and many others. He toured the U.S. with the Orchester der Klangverwaltung Munich and toured Israel with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Itzhak Perlman. He and Polonsky were recently married.

“Both Orion and Anna are rising stars in the classical music world,” Parker said. “I have played duets with both Anna and Orion, but I’ve never been in the same room with them!”

Stern has won praise as a conductor, composer, lecturer and pianist. He has guest-conducted throughout the United States, and composed for numerous dramatic productions in Los Angeles and Seattle and appeared in the Richard Dreyfuss film “The Competition.” In 1990 he won a Grammy Award as “Classical Producer of the Year.” He is currently Music Director of the Seattle Philharmonic, the Port Angeles Symphony and Music Department Administrator at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

“Adam Stern is an extraordinary man,” Parker said. “There isn’t really anything musically that he can’t do … He is a wonderful pianist and a wonderful conductor. He is also an acclaimed composer and arranger. He has written several arrangements specifically for this concert. He has taken the famous music from ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ and made it for two pianos, eight hands. It’s fantastically evocative music.”

Concert-goers will be treated to a surprise finale, which Parker is keeping clouded in mystery.

“It’s going to be on encore where no encore has gone before,” he said.

Following the concert, a fireside party will feature desserts by Passionate for Pies and Sugar Baby Specialty Cakes, a coffee bar and wines from Thurston Wolfe. There will also be a live auction, where patrons can bid on ‘Music Lovers Adventure Trips’ to other Northwest festivals in 2011.

Concert tickets are $150 and may be purchased online at www.oicmf.org or by calling the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival office at 376-6636.