Nickolas Kaplan is a Chicago-born trumpeter, composer, arranger, and educator in Chicago. A recent graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with his Master’s in Jazz Trumpet Performance, Nickolas served as the Jazz Trumpet Graduate Assistant, teaching private lessons and co-directing the U of I Jazz Band III, for which he was named to the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students. Nickolas has studied with such teachers as Tito Carillo, Victor Garcia, Marques Carroll, Chip McNeill, Pat Harbison; and performed with such educators, musicians, and clinicians as Orbert Davis, Wayne Bergeron, Jon Faddis, Ramsey Lewis, Steve Davis, Michael Mwenso, Edu Ribiero, Eric Richards, Jeff Coffin, and the Count Basie Orchestra rhythm section. As an arranger, Nickolas has penned over 100 arrangements for big band, studio orchestra, jazz choir, and small group settings of music ranging from jazz, hip hop, neo-soul, rock, Broadway, and Afro-Cuban music. In 2023, Nickolas was named a recipient of a Chicago; named an Individual Artist Grant Recipient by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events (DCASE) for an upcoming album that features the Chicago BAM Orchestra, a big band led by Nickolas featuring musicians from across Chicago's rich and diverse improvised music scene coming together in celebration of the legacy and contemporary iterations of Black American Music. In 2024, Nickolas premiered the 6-part Autistry Suite for jazz octet, a piece that explores the lived experience of the autism spectrum and neurodivergence through composed and improvised music, the recording of which will be released as a debut album in 2025. As a freelance bandleader and sideman, Nickolas has performed throughout Chicago at such venues as Andy's Jazz Club, the Jazz Showcase, Elastic Arts, the Promontory, Cafe Mustache, Le Piano, the California Clipper, Easy Does It, Fitzgerald's, Millennium Park, and Fulton Street Collective.