Gary Lee Nelson

In 1964, Nelson attended Utrecht University's Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands. He earned his composition doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied with Paul Pisk and Robert Wykes. He has taught at Purdue University and Bowling Green State University. He was a faculty member at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music from 1974 until his retirement in 2007.

Nelson has worked at Bell Laboratories, the Swedish Radio Electronic Music Studios in Stockholm and at the Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music (IRCAM) in Paris. He has been composer in residence and guest researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Taiwan's National Chiao Tung and Soochow Universities, Hong Kong Baptist University, the National University of Singapore, Moscow Conservatory of Music and Yunan State University in the People's Republic of China.

Nelson's computer music specialties include real time interactive performance and "hyperinstruments." This term was coined to give focus to a new way that music is being made in the early 21st century. A hyperinstrument consists of a computer, a set of digital synthesizers, a performance interface, and software for linking them all together. Nelson chooses the MIDI Horn for his solo performances. The MIDI Horn is a digital wind instrument designed and constructed at Oberlin by music engineer, John Talbert. A Macintosh computer, and an array of synthesizers from Yamaha, Roland, and E-mu Systems complete Nelson's concert setup. He has performed more than 200 times around the world since 1987. Some of his compositions are not amenable to performance by live musicians—live performances include an empty stage, with the music heard via speakers reproducing a computer signal.

Nelson has received grants from the Ohio Arts Council, the National Science Foundation, the Sloane Foundation, the Powers Foundation and the Shansi Foundation.

In 2004, Nelson was commissioned by the Boston Museum of Science to create interactive software that demonstrated principles of genetics and evolution through musical sound and graphic animations.