Nikita Istratov (b. 2006) has been playing piano since the age of 6 under the tutelage of Elena Istratova. He completed high school in Portland, OR with a full IB Diploma. In high school, he was selected as a U.S. Presidential Scholars Candidate, won a U.S. National Merit Scholarship, and published two books. He is now in his second year of college, studying piano on scholarship under Dr. Alexandre Dossin. Also in his time in high school, he completed the Level X examinations of the OMTA Piano Syllabus program “With Distinction,” performed at Weill Recital Hall in New York twice, and won first prize at the 2021 Pittsburgh International Piano Competition. In 2024, he won the Grand Prize award at the 2025 Portland Choir and Orchestra Youth Musician Scholarship program. Recently, he won first prize at the 2022 and 2025 Oregon State OPUS competitions and received a discretionary award at each of those years’ national competition rounds. Nikita has won first place at the OMTA Donna and David Eason, Francis Virginia Melton, and Gladys Strong scholarships, and won third prize in the 2022 Pacific International Piano Competition. Nikita also performed in May 2024 at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Portland, OR, as a winner of the MetroArts Young Artists Debut! competition.

He was selected for and attended the 2023 New York University Steinhardt School MPAP Summer Piano Intensive, where he studied with NYU piano faculty including Jeffrey Swann, Manuel Laufer, and Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner. In New York, he also performed at Steinway Hall. Nikita has taken masterclasses with artists including Antonio Pompa-Baldi, José Ramón Méndez, Alexander Tutunov, and Julio Elizalde.

Most recently, he won the 1st place Colliver Award for best piano performance at the Monday Music Club of Portland Music Awards - the only participant in any instrument category to achieve a score of 50/50 points. Nikita loves attending concerts and studying classical music, from theory to analysis. He recently received the University of Oregon’s competitive First-Year Research Award to study, analyze, and present the music of Sofia Gubaidulina. In the summer of 2025, he was selected from almost fifty applicants as a winner of All Classical Radio’s inaugural Access Recording Project to record Gubaidulina’s music and present a solo lecture-recital at the Radio’s Irving Levin Performance Hall in December 2025. He was also named a finalist of the 2025 Silicon Valley Open Doors international piano competition. He is a member of the student staff of the Oregon Piano Institute, responsible for program research and student outreach. In April 2025, he participated in the world premiere performance of Oregon Soundscapes (with a piece composed for him by Andrew Cannestra). Nikita also represents the undergraduate instrumental performance student body on the Dean’s Student Advisory Council at the UO School of Music and Dance. Nikita studies collaborative piano performance with Dr. David Riley, historical keyboard performance practice with Dr. Joyce Chen (under who he presented on the fortepiano performance practice of W.A. Mozart at the 2025 UO Undergraduate Research Symposium), and instrumental conducting with Rodrigo Gonzalez Jacob.

In August 2025, Nikita attended the 2025 Gijón International Piano Festival. At the festival, Nikita learned immensely from the teachings of Prof. Robert McDonald, Prof. Logan Skelton, and Prof. Amy Lin. While in Spain, he performed in the city of Candás at a concert of the International Piano Festival José Luis Vega "Pelis".