Nikita Koshkin

Who is Nikita Koshkin?

Nikita Koshkin is a classical guitarist and composer born in Moscow.

His early influences included Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, as well as rock music. Koshkin first came to prominence with his suite "The Prince's Toys," completed in 1980 and first performed by the Czech-born guitarist Vladimir Mikulka. It depicts the fairytale world of a child in which his toys come to life and, eventually, abduct him to some other dimension. The suite incorporates numerous sound-effects on the guitar to paint images: the so-called 'snare drum' effect, for example, created by holding down crossed B and E strings with the left hand, to imitate the drums of toy soldiers. Other extended techniques include scraping the strings with the fingernails; a large variety of percussive effects; 'playing' the strings between the tuning heads and nut, or the knotted sections of the strings on the bridge; 'hammer-ons', where the left hand fingers suddenly depress the string against the fingerboard without the intervention of the right hand; and so on.