Karen Nelson, violin
Karen Nelson, a graduate of Luther College, has been a freelance musician in the Chicago area since 1974. Her main teachers were Samuel Magad and Joseph Golan, both of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Nelson currently serves as Principal Second Violin of the Chicago Sinfonietta (since 1987), The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago and Chamber Opera Chicago (for which she is Personnel Manager), and is a member of the Ravinia Festival Orchestra and the Chicago Philharmonic. She has performed on many recordings produced by these groups and has toured with the Chicago Sinfonietta and the Chicago String Ensemble in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the Canary Islands.
Ms. Nelson spent three seasons with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and twenty years with the Chicago String Ensemble (doubling as Personnel Manager for seventeen of those years), and has appeared with the Lyric Opera Orchestra of Chicago, Chicago Opera Theater, Fulcrum Point, Orbert Davis and the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, Chicago Pops Orchestra, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Rockford Symphony Orchestra, New Philharmonic Orchestra, Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, and dance companies such as American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, Kirov and Bolshoi Ballets, and the former annual Chicago Tribune Charities production of The Nutcracker.
Ms. Nelson was Acting Concertmaster of the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra in 2004-5 and 2007 and has been Assistant Concertmaster of the Park Ridge Civic Orchestra since 2001. She has performed in the Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra (Door County, WI) every August since 1983 and has appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio and Chicago’s WFMT in live and prerecorded broadcasts. Her work has included playing backup for numerous vocal artists of our day (Ray Charles, Barry Manilow, Smokey Robinson, Burt Bacharach, Luciano Pavorotti, and Tony Bennett, to name just a few) and commercial recording for clients such as McDonalds, Nintendo, Quaker Oats, and Curtis Mayfield.
In addition to her experience as an orchestral musician, Ms. Nelson provides strolling violinists and chamber music for weddings, parties and corporate events. She has two sons and is married to Bruce, a percussionist.