Nikita Vaganov was born in Moscow. He studied at the Gnessins’ State Music College with Vladimir Ferapontov, and later at the Musikhochschule Lübeck (Germany) with Reiner Wehle, at the Madrid Royal Conservatory with Adolfo Garcés and at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart with Norbert Kaiser. Has taken part in master-classes given by major clarinetists including Sabine Meyer, Eduard Brunner, Vicente Alberola and Sergio Bossi.
The musician has been a prize-winner at several competitions, among them the All-Russian Clarinet Competition (Moscow, 2003), the Possehl young performers’ competition (Lübeck, 2009) the Lions Club European Competition (Stuttgart, 2012) and the International Tchaikovsky Competition (2019).
In 2011, together with students from the Musikhochschule Lübeck he founded the Cascade wind sextet, which was a prize-winner at Germany’s Inter-School Student Competition (Düsseldorf, 2012). The performer has collaborated with various youth orchestras and festivals including the IRO International Youth Orchestra (Ochsenhausen, Germany), the Baltic Youth Orchestra directed by Kristjan Järvi, the Verbier Festival Orchestra (Switzerland) and the Oberstdorfer Musiksommer festival (2013).
Since 2013 he has been a soloist of the Mariinsky Orchestra clarinet section, also playing solo and chamber concerts.
