Nikolai Kachanov
Nikolai Kachanov was born in the Siberian city of Barnaul, capital of the Altai Region. He holds a PhD in choral conducting from the Novosibirsk Conservatory. In 1981, Maestro Kachanov moved to the United States with his wife, Tamara, a professional musician and singer. In 1984, together, they founded the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York, and in 2016, the Nikolai Kachanov Singers choral ensemble. Tamara serves as an Executive Director in both groups. Kachanov Singers perform at the Nicholas Roerich Museum where they are artists-in-residence.
Nikolai and Tamara created the Ussachevsky Festival of Russian-American contemporary music, held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Kachanov has prepared concert choruses for such famous conductors as Valery Gergiev and Leon Botstein. He also released several CDs. One of them, Tchaikovsky’s “Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” was chosen by the New York Times among the ten top classical CDs of 2001.
Kachanov’s own compositions appear on a CD “Benevolence,” a setting of Nicholas Roerich’s poetry. Nikolai and Tamara also commissioned several compositions connected with the Agni Yoga Teaching, and Nicholas Roerich’s poems and paintings, from American and Russian composers.
They both started Agni Yoga studies in the city of Novosibirsk, in Siberia, in the early 1970s. Nikolai and Tamara were fortunate to continue their studies with Sina Fosdick, the student of the Roerichs and the first Director of the Nicholas Roerich Museum, as well as with Edgar Lansbury, the President of Agni Yoga Society, when they arrived in New York, in 1981. They later became members of the board of Trustees of the Nicholas Roerich Museum and the Agni Yoga Society.
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