Nikolai Klotchkov
A native of Moscow, Russia, Nikolai Klotchkov believes that only an excellent musician is able to create a valid scientific description of music phenomenon. Through his research of musicians’ physiology and the cognitive processes involved in music performance and perception, as well as applying his interdisciplinary background, he hopes to create better methods to teach beginning instrumentalists and to improve the performance of mature musicians, along with utilizing the power of music in clinical setting.
Before moving to the United States, Nikolai studied saxophone with Aleksey Volkov at Ippolitov-Ivanov State Pedagogical Institute. In May 2019 Nikolai graduated from Auburn University with the BM in Music Performance - classical saxophone under Dr. Michael Pendowski, and BS in Interdisciplinary Studies - kinesiology, computer science and neuroscience. In 2018, Nikolai was a winner in the Gulf Coast Steinway Society Concerto Competition and won the first prize in the Rising Talents of Americas International Competition.
Now a DMA student at Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University he studies saxophone performance under Mr. Gary Louie and conducts scientific research. Nikolai performs regularly as a soloist and in chamber groups both in the United States and Russia and has previously appeared with lectures at North American Saxophone Alliance national and regional conferences.
Nikolai decided to be an artist when he realized that this is the best way to make other people experience and think through their own personal emotional states.
In case Nikolai's artistic or scholar work is studied worldwide, that would mean that the world is different from the current world’s state. It would be different in the way that the most important thing in such a world would not be money and material wealth. It would be human internal states and non-material values which are currently inhibited by the desire of gaining more and more material prosperity.
