Sheila Mary Nelson (5 March 1936 – 16 November 2020)[1] was an English musician, music educator, writer and composer.

[2] In 1976 she went to the United States on a Churchill Fellowship to study with the eminent string pedagogue Paul Rolland,[3] and in the 1980s directed an innovative group-teaching project[4] in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

The Tower Hamlets Project taught strings and piano to whole school classes in a deprived area of London, and was featured in a six-part TV documentary series, Beginners Please.

[3] Nelson was co-author of the Essential String Method series and author/composer of many other music instruction and repertoire books, published by Boosey & Hawkes.

[5] She was an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music (Hon RAM), a distinction limited to 300 musicians.