Dr. Ron Nelson

Ron Nelson (born 1929) is a native of Joliet, Illinois. He received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1952, the Master's degree in 1953, and the Doctor of Music Arts degree in 1956 from the Eastman School of Music. He studied in France the Ecole Normale de Musique and, in 1955, at the Paris Conservatory under a Fulbright Grant.

Dr. Nelson joined the Brown University faculty the following year as an Assistant Professor, attaining the rank of Associate Professor in 1960 and Full Professor in 1968. He served as Chairman of the Department of Music from 1963-1973, and in 1991 he was awarded the Acuff Chair of Excellence in the Creative Arts, becoming the first musician to hold the chair.

In l993 his Passacaglia (Homage on B-A-C-H) won the "triple crown" of wind band composition competitions by winning the National Band Association prize, the American Bandmasters Association's ABA/Ostwald Band Composition Contest, and the Louis and Virginia Sudler International Wind Band Composition Contest making Nelson the first composer to win all three competitions within the same period. He was awarded the Medal of Honor by the John Philip Sousa Foundation in 1994.

He has gained wide recognition as a composer of choral, band and orchestral works. Commissions include The National Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, USAF Band and numerous colleges and universities.

Nelson retired from Brown University in 1993 and currently resides in Arizona. His other works for band include Rocky Point Holiday, Savannah River Holiday, Medieval Suite, Aspen Jubilee, Sonoran Desert Holiday, Courtly Airs and Dances, and Epiphanies.

Eight of his works performed by the Dallas Wind Symphony can be heard on Reference Recordings RR-76CD titled Holidays and Epiphanies. His music is published by Boosey and Hawkes, Ludwig, Presser and Carl Fisher.

Conductor Leonard Slatkin may have described Ron Nelson best: "Nelson is the quintessential American composer. He has the ability to move between conservative and newer styles with ease. The fact that he’s a little hard to categorize is what makes him interesting."