Violinist, performer/educator, Leah Gale Nelson specializes in the historical performance practices of the 17th-, 18th-, and early-19th-centuries. Based in New York City, she has performed throughout North America and in Europe, and is known for her refined and artistic interpretations of baroque and classical music as a soloist, chamber musician, leader and collaborator. She has led landmark performances in New York including the U.S. premieres of passions by Telemann (Luke, 1748; Matthew, 1746) and C.P.E. Bach (Matthew, 1769) for the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, in New York City, where she has been concertmaster and guest soloist since 1999. She has also been concertmaster/string leader for sacred works for the Basilica of Saint Mary, Minneapolis, 17th-century opera performances for Aspen Festival Opera Theater, Gotham Chamber Opera (NYC), and for multiple projects with Chicago Opera Theater and Chicago's Music of the Baroque, by invitation of Dame Jane Glover.

With a love for teaching and for research, she serves as Visiting Scholar and Part-time Lecturer at Rutgers University, and has directed Rutgers Undergraduate String Ensemble and Rutgers Baroque Players incorporating Historical Performance concepts within mainstream ensembles. She also teaches Historical Performance, and period instruments, for the New York Continuo Collective, and Northwestern Bach Academy, (a summer workshop, the former Illinois Bach Academy) with Andrew Megill. From her private studio students have gone on to graduate studies at Basel's Schola Cantorum, Case Western Reserve University, and the Juilliard School's Historical Performance program. She coaches string players for Yale University's Collegium Musicum and Yale Baroque Opera Project, and has taught at the Aspen Music Festival.

In 2021 she was invited to collaborate as music director for Meredith Martin and Phil Chan's Ballet des Porcelaines, (music from a ballet pantomime by Nicolas Racot de Grandval (1676-1753), Le Prince Pot a Thé), which had its premiere in the Petrie Sculpture Court for the Gala opening of Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Leah curated a chamber music series, Baroque in the Fields, and a multi-disciplinary project, JEFFERSON CARRIAGE, combining dance, music, and contemporary reflections on divers aspects of life and culture in Colonial America. She continues as a frequent collaborator with dancers from the New York Baroque Dance Company on a variety of projects, which include recent explorations into the work of Ignatius Sancho. For Carlos Fittante and BALAM Dance Theater's Fandango Fantasie she performed Boccherini's “Fandango” Quintet in her own adaptation for solo violin. Her rendition of Biber's Passacaglia is in the repertoire of the dance company Isabel Gotzkowsky and Friends.

With 2007 began an immersion into the study of Biber's “Rosary Sonatas” for violin in scordatura, with performances for the Church of St. Luke in the Fields Music & Arts concert series in Greenwich Village, New York, and at the Basilica of Saint Mary, Minneapolis, a journey that inspired a recording for the Lyrichord label, BIBER: THE SACRED MYSTERIES. Released to critical acclaim in 2011, the recording was hailed by Oxford University Press, Early Music, as “an elegant and beautiful recording.” Leah has enjoyed countless collaborations with fellow instrumentalists, vocalists, dancers, stage and choral directors, joining early music and historical practice with modern performance. Some of these projects are documented in the video links below.

Her early days in early music were spent performing orchestral and chamber music throughout the country, especially along the Northeast Corridor, from Boston to Washington DC, with Concert Royal, Clarion Music Society, the American Classical Orchestra, Boston Camerata, NYS Baroque, The Publick Musick, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and Washington Bach Consort, among others, and also with Musica Angelica (L.A.), Dallas Bach Society, The Schubert Club (St. Paul, MN), and Dublin's Opera Theatre Company (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music). In October 2001 she performed at the Scarlatti Festival in Palermo, Sicily. She has worked with leading early music directors including, Dame Jane Glover, Paul Goodwin, Drew Minter, Anthony Newman, Andrew Parrot, Fredrick Renz, James Richman, Kenneth Slowik, Catherine Turocy, Newell Jenkins, and Paul Echols.

Born in Texas and raised in Minnesota, she holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Chicago Musical College, where she studied orchestral repertoire and performance as a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and had the invaluable experience working closely with the musical brilliance, integrity, and infectious enthusiasm of conductor and Bernstein protégé, Michael Morgan, as well as the opportunity to work with Daniel Barenboim, John Corigliano, Leonard Slatkin, Joan Tower, Christopher Hogwood, and Sir Georg Solti. She holds a Master of Music degree from Mannes College of Music in New York, where she studied violin with the incomparable David Nadien, and Historical Performance as part of the Mannes Camerata and the once vibrant Mannes Historical Performance Program, with violinist Nancy Wilson, harpsichordist Arthur Haas, and stage director Paul Echols; additional studies in baroque violin with Michael Sand, Marilyn McDonald, Risa Browder, and Sarah Sumner.

PROJECT LINKS:

BIBER: THE SACRED MYSTERIES

with Daniel Swenberg & Dongsok Shin

a 2CD set

JEFFERSON CARRIAGE

Historical Performance in Historical Spaces

a project on hold

BAROQUE IN THE FIELDS

a chamber music series

another project on hold

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VIDEO LINKS: