Sergei Nakariakov

Sergei Mikhailovich Nakariakov (; ; born 10 May 1977) is a Russian-Israeli classical trumpet and flugelhorn player. Born in Gorky, he came to international attention as a young performer in the early 1990s and has been noted for expanding the concert repertoire of the trumpet and flugelhorn through transcriptions, commissions and recordings.

Early life and career Nakariakov was born in Gorky, Soviet Union. He began musical studies on the piano at the age of six, but after a spinal injury in 1986 he changed to the trumpet. His father, Mikhail Nakariakov, supported the transition and later made many of the transcriptions that became part of his repertoire. From the age of ten he performed with orchestras in major concert halls of the Soviet Union.

In 1993 and 1994, Nakariakov studied with the French trumpeter Guy Touvron at the Conservatoire National de Région in Paris.

Conductors with whom he has worked in concerts or recordings include Vladimir Spivakov, Christoph Eschenbach, Yuri Bashmet, Yuri Temirkanov, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jiří Bělohlávek, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Sir Neville Marriner, Kent Nagano, Mikhail Pletnev, Sakari Oramo, Valery Gergiev, Hugh Wolff and Nayden Todorov, among others. Widmann's ad absurdum, a concert piece for trumpet and orchestra, was dedicated to Nakariakov and premiered in 2006.

In May 2026, Frequenza Festival was presented in Bulgaria for the first time at Bulgaria Hall in collaboration with the Sofia Philharmonic. The programme included chamber concerts, a grand opening with the Sofia Philharmonic, masterclasses and a final concert featuring the festival participants. Artists associated with the Sofia edition included Barnabás Kelemen, Kevin Zhu, David Taylor, Jing Zhao, Roman Spitzer, Roland Szentpáli, Maria Meerovitch, Misha Tsiganov, Saar Berger, Boris Andrianov, Alex Sipiagin, Matthew Gee and Nakariakov. He has recorded works by composers such as Joseph Haydn, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, J. B. Neruda, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Georg Philipp Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi, Felix Mendelssohn, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Camille Saint-Saëns, Max Bruch, George Gershwin and Jörg Widmann.

Flugelhorn Nakariakov has also made several recordings on the flugelhorn. In his album Concertos for Trumpet, he performed music transcribed from violin, viola and cello concertos. In No Limit, he played Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, originally for cello and orchestra, in a transcription for flugelhorn.

He has been credited with helping to bring the flugelhorn to prominence as a concert solo instrument.

Musical equipment Nakariakov has performed on AR Resonance instruments, including the AR Resonance Nakariakov model B-flat trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn and mouthpieces. For many years he played on Courtois instruments, and in earlier years he also played a Getzen trumpet.