Composer Erik Nielsen has created works for chorus, orchestra, wind ensemble, solo instruments, chamber music, works for dance, film and electronic music. His pieces have been performed all over the world by ensembles including A Far Cry, the Amabile, Chiara, Emerson and Ying String Quartets; the National Symphony Orchestra; the Killington and Manchester Chamber Players; Bread and Puppet Theater; the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble; Vermont Opera Theater, Vermont Symphony; Vermont Youth Orchestra and Village and Northern Harmony. He has won awards from ASCAP, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Vermont Music Teachers Association. In September 2015, his opera, A Fleeting Animal, a collaboration with poet/playwright David Budbill that premiered in 2000, was performed in a newly revised edition to great acclaim in six locations in Vermont. Recent commissions include A Voice in the Night, a four-movement work for bassoon and piano, written for William Short, co-principal bassoonist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Bryan Wagorn, pianist and assistant conductor at The Met; Fanfare in B Flat, commissioned by the Vermont Symphony for their 80th anniversary, Glimpses of Azure, commissioned by the Boston string orchestra, A Far Cry; The Crane Maiden for chamber ensemble, narrator and three actors; Trajectory of Flight for mezzo-soprano and strings; and his Quartet for Strings #2. In 2002 he received the National Symphony Orchestra’s composition prize for Vermont. The resulting commissioned work, his Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, was premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. on March 20, 2004.
