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.”
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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.
Awards
Winner of the 2018 National Flute Association Jazz Flute Competition
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