John Nelson

The American conductor John Wilton Nelson was born the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor, to American missionaries living in Costa Rica. He grew up with considerable exposure to religious vocal music. He is still most strongly identified with his interest in, and performance of, major choral-orchestral sacred music masterworks of the Western musical tradition. He studied in Orlando, FL, and at Wheaton College in Illinois, then took conducting from Jean Morel at the Juilliard School in New York. While there, he won the Irving Berlin Award for conducting. He worked primaril...