Richard Nelson's aim as composer and guitarist is to engage and nurture communities—of his collaborating musicians, of audiences, and beyond—through wide-ranging musical journeys that in themselves strive to bridge and creatively integrate contemporary jazz, contemporary classical, and American folk/blues/rock traditions in original and unpredictable ways. His works range from fully-notated chamber music pieces to small-group jazz and improvisation prompts to large-scale compositions for jazz orchestra. He has released four albums of original works for a variety of large and small ensembles—Deep River, Pursuit, Origin Story, and Figurations—and he appears as a sideman on many others, including more than 10 with the Boston-based Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. In addition to composing and performing, he teaches composition and improvisation at the University of Maine at Augusta.
Among many other activities, he is co-leader, guitarist, and a principal composer for the Makrokosmos Orchestra, a 15-player, New York-based hybrid jazz/new-music ensemble. During his 2015 residency, he began work on dissolve... for that group, part of a large-scale triptych (along with Float and Cohere), first premiered in its entirety at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn in October of 2019.
