Nancy Elan

A native New Yorker, Nancy studied violin at The Juilliard School with Margaret Pardee and Ivan Galamian, and chamber music with Felix Galimir and the Juilliard String Quartet. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees, she pursued further studies with Paul Zukofsky.

Keenly interested in new music, she collaborated with such elite groups as Speculum Musicae and The Group for Contemporary Music, and became solo violinist in the chamber ensemble Parnassus. Milton Babbitt, Charles Wourinen and Steve Reich are among the composers with whom she has worked and recorded.

Nancy led the Spoleto Festival Orchestra (Italy) in Roman Polanski’s production of Berg’s Lulu, and was the Festival’s soloist for Bach’s concerti grossi. She was a member of the NYC Ballet Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra and American Symphony, and worked with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Chicago Lyric Opera.

Since moving to London in 1993 she has twice travelled to South Africa to assist the ‘Buskaid’ program of Rosemary Nalden MBE, teaching violin to children in Soweto, and has visited Palestine with fellow LPO violinist Tom Eisner, playing concerts for children in refugee camps.

She is a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and plays for John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Nancy joined the LPO in 1998.