Violinist Holly Nelson has appeared in concert as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician throughout the United States. In 2024, she became the concertmaster of the Pan- American Symphony Orchestra, a DC-based ensemble dedicated to performing Latin American orchestral repertoire. She first appeared with them as soloist in a program of tango works for violin and orchestra at the Argentinian Embassy of the United States and later made her Kennedy Center debut as concertmaster of the ensemble in April of 2024. Other concerto engagements in 2024 include performing Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas for Violin and Orchestra by A. Piazzolla (arr. L. Desyatnikov) with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC and Baltimore, MD, Florence Price’s Violin Concerto no. 2 with the Durham Symphony Orchestra in NC and giving the Maryland premiere of John Williams’ violin concerto Treesong with the John Williams Project Orchestra at the Peabody Institute’s Friedberg Hall in Baltimore, MD.
In 2022, Ms. Nelson received the Peabody Institute of Music’s Presser Award, which “is designed to especially encourage and support the advanced education and careers of truly exceptional graduate music students who have the potential to make a notable contribution to the field of music.” In 2023, she was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant to study tango music performance practice and pedagogy in Buenos Aires, Argentina for nine months. During her grant, she was invited to give a solo violin performance at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires.
Ms. Nelson has held residencies at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Jazz at Lincoln Center as a violin fellow with The Orchestra Now, and was formerly a member of the Chamber Orchestra of New York and the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra (NY). She was a featured artist at the opening gala of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial in 2010 in New York City and has also appeared in recital at New York University, the Fox Performing Arts Theater in El Paso, TX, National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY and at the Atlantic Music Festival. Other festival appearances include Britten Pears in England, Banff and Domaine Forget in Canada and The Lucerne Festival and Tibor Varga Academy in Switzerland. Additionally, she has had the opportunity to perform in France, Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, China and Taiwan.
Holly Nelson received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Mannes College of Music in New York City and her Master of Music from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) in Ohio, where she was the teaching assistant to Giora Schmidt. She is currently completing her doctorate at the Peabody Institute as a Dean’s Doctoral Fellow in the studio of Vadim Gluzman. Her other notable professors include Kurt Sassmannshaus, Ann Setzer, Daniel Phillips and Garrett Fischbach. She has taught at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and has held artist residencies and presented music workshops at Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill and Fordham University, among others.