Samuel Nelson, viola

Samuel Nelson is a native born South Dakotan who began his string studies at the age of eight. Sam began private lessons at the age of fourteen with his teachers Coral White, and Carol Knowles. He graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2014, where he studied with Jodi Levitz. Presently, he performs, records, and teaches throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. He has performed in settings ranging from intimate living room chamber music, to an amphitheater with 12,000 people waving their phone lights in the dark to a goth rock power ballad. Sam is one violinist in the Astraeus String Quartet, a quartet dedicated to performing disparate works of past and present to audiences in unconventional settings. He is proud to be a violist & violinist in a city as artistic and diverse as San Francisco, and is equally grateful to be a member of an ensemble as beguiling as One Found Sound.