Spent his childhood in Moscow, Russia, Nikolai Klotchkov started playing classical saxophone at the age of twelve. In 2016, he was a winner in the Alabama Federation of Music Clubs Collegiate Scholarships audition and won alternate at the Alabama Music Teachers National Association Performance Competition. Before moving to the United States, he studied saxophone with Aleksey Volkov at Ippolitov-Ivanov State Pedagogical Institute. Now a senior at Auburn University with plans for graduate school, he is double majoring in Music Performance and Interdisciplinary Studies (with a concentration in Neuroscience, Exercise Science, and Computer Science). Through his research of musicians’ physiology and the cognitive processes involved in music performance and perception, he hopes to create better methods to teach beginning instrumentalists and to improve the performance of mature musicians. He currently studies under Dr. Michael Pendowski and performs with the Tiger Saxophone Quartet and the Auburn University Symphonic band.
