The Bio

For the past decade, flutist, composer and band leader Elsa Nilsson has explored

unlikely connections among tendencies of human nature, contradiction and pluralism

and the natural world. A conceptualist from every angle, the Gothenburg native left

Sweden for Seattle in 2005 before settling in Brooklyn in 2010. Her breadth of work

engages urgency, high-level improvising and layered, cinematic orchestration; her

artistry, an earnest and actionable desire to collaborate with multimodal artists and the

changing world around her.

A lifelong scholar, Elsa approaches each new project with curiosity and inquiry. She

allows kernels of an idea to alter and develop her perspective. Her openness and

refinement have prompted collaboration — often leading to recordings — with a roster

of visionaries, including Jon Cowherd, Chris Morrissey, Karl Berger, Robert Dick, Jamie

Baum, Jessica Lurie, Rodrigo Recabarren, Marty Kenney, Santiago Leibson, Mark

Ferber, Sebastian Noelle, Tina Raymond, Emma Dayhuff, the CMS improvisers

Orchestra, Vinny Golia, Brad Shepik, Jovino Santos Neto, Chuck Deardorf, Jim Knapp

and Bill Frisell through the CMA Performance Plus grant with Dawn Clement.

Listeners gravitate to Elsa’s sound for its truthful searching, moment to moment, within

its athleticism and lyrical pulse. She has appeared across the U.S. and internationally at

Nefertiti Jazz Club and Victoriateatern (Sweden), Winter Jazzfest, Earshot Jazz

Festival, Recoleta International Jazz Festival, Mount Hood Jazz Festival, Aarhus Jazz

Festival, Nublu Jazz Festival, National Sawdust, Blue Note Jazz Club, Cornelia Street

Cafe, 55 Bar, Bar Bayeux, The Owl Music Parlor, Shapeshifter Lab, Roulette, Rockwood

Music Hall, The Jazz Loft, The Nash (Arizona), Constellations (Chicago), Cliff Bell’s

(Detroit), Cafe Coda (Wisconsin),  The Blue Room (Kansas City, Missouri), The Black

Cat (San Francisco) and Libretto (California). 

Elsa’s output engages diversity of sound and texture. She explores what’s physical and

intangible. Compelled by her desire to better understand and connect with the planet

and its inhabitants, she creates ambitious, research-driven projects that have garnered

peer acknowledgment and critical praise. Solo leader releases include Atlas Of Sound -

Coast Redwoods (2022), Dark Is Light Is (2021), Hindsight (2020), After Us (2018) and

Salt Wind (2017). During her tenure with acclaimed ensemble Ethesis Quartet, Elsa and

her fellow artists received effusive praise from JazzIz and All About Jazz, the former

praising their sound as “a jazz multiverse that allows them to do everything everywhere

all at once…[leaving] listeners feeling happily exhausted by the final cymbal crash.”

In 2022, Elsa issued Atlas of Sound - Coast Redwoods, the first in a series of trio

releases inspired by human connection to locations of the natural world. Before entering

the studio, she spends time communing with each location, learning from its

environment and ecosystem, to draw inspiration for each composition plus the recording

as a whole. “Because of the abstraction of instrumental music, what I put out into the

world doesn’t belong to me anymore,” she says. “It belongs to the listener. That doesn’t

mean that all of the thought and all of the processing and all of the growth…everything

that goes into creating art is gone. It just means that it’s taking on its own life.” In fall

2024 she’s poised to issue Project Oasis, the second Atlas of Sound release,

researched in Patagonia.

Throughout her career, Elsa has received prestigious awards, residencies and grant

funding to support her research, composing and performances. Her work has appeared

in DownBeat, Jazzwise, Textura, Bandcamp, Broadway World, JazzIz, All About Jazz,

New York Jazz Record, Sound in Review and Hot House Jazz Guide. She’s the 2018

winner of the National Flute Association’s Jazz Flute Competition, and the recipient of

multiple Chamber Music America grants, including a 2022 New Jazz Works grant for

Band of Pulses, whose release Pulses features the voice of Dr. Maya Angelou and

“explores the intersection between spoken language and Jazz.” The project released in

October 2023 at National Sawdust, followed by a series of performances presented at

Earshot Jazz Festival, Winter Jazzfest, The Black Cat in San Francisco, The Owl Music

Parlor and more iconic venues and events.

Mentorship and community engagement are integral to Elsa’s expression. She

graduated from Hvitfeldtska gymnasiet in Gothenburg before receiving her bachelor of

music from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, followed by her master of music from

NYU. Her instructors include Chris Potter, Peter Bernstien, Tony Moreno, Ralph Alessi,

Kenny Werner, Robert Dick, Jovino Santos Neto, Brad Shepik and Dawn Clement —

many of whom inspired her to become a mentor to others. She has served as a

professor of Rhythmic Analysis and Socially Engaged Artistry at The New School for

Jazz and Contemporary Music since 2020, and led master classes at University of

Madison, Kansas University, CCM, Cincinnati Public Schools Jazz Academy, Indiana

University and Ann Arbor Arts Clinic. In 2018-20, Elsa served the Women in Jazz

Organization (WIJO) as program coordinator for its mentorship program. During the first

several months of the pandemic lockdown, she launched and hosted Lattice Concerts,

nightly streaming events to keep the music going and connect virtually with those

around her.