Until 2012, he served as chair of the composition department at Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
[1] Nielson spent his childhood in Washington, D.C., but moved with his family to London at age 9.
[4] His works have been performed by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak Orchestra of Bratislava, the Musique Expérimentale de Bourges, and the American Composer's Orchestra at such venues as the Moscow International House of Music, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art and at a number of international events including the World Saxophone Congress, the American Society of University Composers and the Society of Composers, and I Seminario Nacional Pesquisa em Performance Musical in Brazil.
[5] He has received a Fulbright-Hays Grant from the French government, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ibla Foundation in Sicily and the International Society of Bassists.
Nielson won honorable mention in the International Society of Bassists’ Composition Competition 2000 for his Duo Concertant (Danger Man), a work for double bass and percussion.