John Nelson

Conductor John Nelson is noted as a specialist in choral-orchestral music, especially the works of Berlioz. He also built the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from a part-time group into a major American ensemble. Nelson was born on December 6, 1941, in San José, Costa Rica. His parents were American missionaries, and he grew up amid religious choral music. Nelson attended Wheaton College, a Christian institution in Illinois, and went on to the Juilliard School in New York, where he studied conducting with Jean Paul Morel and won the school's Irving Berlin Award. After finishi...