Sergei Istomin (Russian: Сергей Хохлов, or Истомин, Сергей Николаевич) is a cellist and a viola da gamba player. He began his violoncello studies at the age of six at the Gnessin School for gifted children in Moscow, Russia, where he obtained his bachelor's degree (violoncello class of Mrs. V. Birina). He completed his master's degree at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of Valentin Feigin and then later his post-graduate studies with Catharina Meints Caldwell at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Oberlin, Ohio, USA) and August Wenzinger at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute (BPI). In 2018 he received his Doctor of Arts (Music) degree at the Ghent University, Belgium. His doctoral thesis "Variations on a Rococo theme, Op.33: Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Karl Friedrich Wilhel