Lewis J. Nielson is the director of Oberlin College Conservatory of Music’s Division of Contemporary Music, the Chair of its Composition Department and a Professor of Composition. He is also a composer who is beginning to be recognized around the world.

Nielson spent his childhood in Washington, D.C., but moved with his family to London at age 10. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then at Clark University in Massachusetts and the University of Iowa, receiving a Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition in 1977. He served as a Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Georgia, where he also directed the University of Georgia Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, for 21 years, before arriving at Oberlin in 2000. Though he composes very contemporary new music, he loves Beethoven and Wagner, and even played in a few rock bands in his youth.

His works have been performed by, among others, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra in Prague, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra of Bratislava, the Musique Expèrimentale de Bourges in France, the American Composer's Orchestra and the Fresno Philharmonic; and at such venues as, the Great Hall of Tchaikovsky in Moscow, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.; and at events including the World Saxophone Congress in Valencia, Spain, the American Society of University Composers national convention, the Society of Composers Inc. national convention, and I Seminario Nacional Pesquisa em Performance Musical in Brazil. Recordings of Nielson’s works can be heard on five separate record labels.

He has received grants for his work, including a Fulbright-Hays grant from the French government and one from the National Endowment for the Arts, and others from such institutions as the Ibla Foundation in Sicily, and the International Society of Bassists. He has been a Resident Composer-Fellow at the Charles Ives Center for American Music, the Delius Foundation, Meet the Composer, and the Georgia Council for the Arts.

Nielson also has received many commissions, including ones from the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, the University of Georgia Bicentennial Commission and from many important chamber ensembles and solo performers.

Nielson won honorable mention in the International Society of Bassists’ Composition Competition 2000 for his Duo Concertant (Danger Man), a work for double bass and percussion. A few years ago, members of Oberlin's Contemporary Music Ensemble traveled to New York to perform works by Nielson in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, about which Anthony Aibel of the New York Concert Review wrote, “Lewis Nielson is a master composer, an American original. He deserves to be better known, and I think it is simply a matter of time.”