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, New York City, where she has been concertmaster and guest soloist since 1999. She has also served as concertmaster for the Aspen Festival Opera Theater, Gotham Chamber Opera (NYC), and Chicago Opera Theater by invitation of Dame Jane Glover, as guest director for Lyra Baroque Orchestra in Minneapolis, and Recent engagements have included performances in the Petrie Sculpture Court at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Ballet des Porcelaines, in Carnegie Hall with Musica Sacra, in Minneapolis for the Basilica of Saint Mary, and for Yale's Baroque Opera Project.

In 2007, Ms. Nelson began a full immersion in the study of Biber's epic scordatura collection, his “Rosary Sonatas,” with performances in New York and in Minneapolis, a journey that inspired her recording for the Lyrichord label, BIBER: THE SACRED MYSTERIES. Released to critical acclaim in 2011, it was hailed by Oxford University Press, Early Music, as “an elegant and beautiful recording.” She 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 are documented in the video links below. Pre-Covid, she curated a chamber music series, Baroque in the Fields, and a multi-faceted project focused on the arts in Colonial America, JEFFERSON CARRIAGE. With a great appreciation for dance and working with dancers, for BALAM Dance Theater she created Fandango Fantasie, performing her own solo violin arrangement of Boccherini's “Fandango” Quintet, and her rendition of Biber's Passacaglia is in the repertoire of the dance company Isabel Gotzkowsky and Friends. She also frequently partners in projects with members of the New York Baroque Dance Company. 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). She has worked with leading early music directors including, notably, Dame Jane Glover, Paul Goodwin, Drew Minter, Anthony Newman, Andrew Parrot, Fredrick Renz, James Richman, Catherine Turocy, Newell Jenkins, and Paul Echols.

An avid pedagogue, she served as a Visiting Scholar before becoming a Part-time Lecturer at Rutgers University, where she directs baroque ensembles and has coached the Rutgers University String Ensemble, incorporating Historical Performance concepts within a mainstream ensemble. She also teaches Historical Performance for the New York Continuo Collective and the Northwestern Bach Academy, (the former Illinois Bach Academy), and in her private studio from which her 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.

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.