Dr. Kristina Nelson

Education

• Doctor of Music Arts in Bassoon Performance and Pedagogy, D.M.A (2020)
  University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
• Master of Music in Bassoon Performance (2015)
  University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
• Bachelor of Music in Bassoon Performance (2013)
  University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL

Biography

Dr. Kristina Nelson is a bassoonist and educator based in Pensacola, Florida, on faculty at the University of South Alabama, University of West Florida, and Troy University. At South Alabama, she teaches applied bassoon and the bassoon portion of woodwind methods for music education majors. She is a member of the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra and performs regularly with other orchestras along the Gulf Coast. She completed her DMA with Dr. Yoshi Ishikawa at the University of Colorado-Boulder in 2020, working with composer Bill Douglas on a dissertation about his solo and chamber works for bassoon, and a pedagogy project about his teaching methods at the California Institute of the Arts and Naropa University in Boulder. Dr. Nelson presented her research and premiered Douglas’s Partita #3 for Bassoon and Piano at the 2022 IDRS conference. She premiered Jenni Brandon’s Sun Songs for Soprano, English Horn, Bassoon, and Piano at the 2024 IDRS conference with Troy faculty Dr. Jillian Camwell and Dr. Sarah Wee.

Dr. Nelson’s other major teachers include Nancy Goeres at Carnegie Mellon University (AMS certificate), Gabriel Beavers at the University of Miami (MM), and Dr. Jenny Mann at the University of Alabama (BM). She attended summer orchestra festivals including Brevard Music Center, Chautauqua Institute, Sewanee Summer Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Hot Springs Music Festival, and Marrowstone Music Festival.

Dr. Nelson is committed to making the bassoon more accessible to students in South Alabama and along the Gulf Coast, where she is building her private studio, dubbed the “Bassoon Platoon,” which now includes over 30 bassoonists from 6th grade through college.