College of Musical Arts

Susan Nelson enjoys an active career as a performer, teacher, and clinician, and is now the Assistant Professor of Bassoon at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), Ohio. Most recently she taught bassoon and theory at Stephen F. Austin State University and played with the Stone Fort Wind Quintet in Nacogdoches, Texas. In the summer Dr. Nelson teaches at the Bocal Majority Bassoon Camp and BGSU’s Double Reed-Making Camp. She has performed with the annual Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, as well as the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Adrian Symphony Orchestra, and the Helena Symphony. Dr. Nelson taught at both Adrian and Heidelberg Colleges and was a member of the Heidelberg faculty wind quintet. She also held the position of principal bassoon in the Great Falls Symphony and was a member of the Chinook Winds quintet in Great Falls, Montana. Dr. Nelson has received the top award at the Midwest Double Reed Society Young Artists Competition, was a finalist in the University of Oklahoma Concerto Competition, a finalist in the Arapahoe Philharmonic Concerto competition, and won third place in the Ann Arbor Society for the Musical Arts competition. She is a graduate of the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Michigan. Her primary teachers include Jeffrey Lyman, Carl Rath, and Alan Hawkins.