Steve Nelson-Raney has been performing his own music since the late sixties. Since then he has given numerous concerts throughout the country and appeared with such musicians as Malcolm Goldstein, Peter Kowald, Ernie Watts, Michael Zerang, Tom Hamilton, Ken Vandermark and the traditional players of Greek Macedonia. Solo performances have included two in New York City. Nelson-Raney's current work includes continuation of ongoing improvisations for saxophone and piano, composition in various mediums and collaborations with other musicians, writers and visual artists (two notable collaborative performances have been with writers Anne Waldman and Tom Raworth).

Saxophonist/pianist Steve Nelson-Raney was a founding member of the free improvisation trio Audiotrope. He continues to perform with instrument inventor Hal Rammel, guitarist Jack Grassel and laptop improviser Christopher Burns. He also performs with MiLO (Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra). A selection of Nelson-Raney's recordings is reviewed in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (8th Edition).

Nelson-Raney is the author of The Core/Strata Theory of Harmonic Extensions: A Proposal for Bitonality.

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Nelson-Raney's writing has been published in two Midwestern anthologies, Poetry Is For People and Poetry Out Of Wisconsin, in Intervals, an anthology of writings by musicians, and in various magazines, such as traverse, Gam and Fell Swoop.

Active in bookarts since 1986, Nelson-Raney has utilized the book form in hundreds of works that have included text, photography, drawing, painting and collage. Currently he produces specifically designed 'packets', each containing a series of thematically related photographs. Nelson-Raney's visual work has been exhibited in numerous shows throughout the Midwest; he has had two one-person shows at Woodland Pattern Book Center as well as a joint show there with Hal Rammel. A large selection of Nelson-Raney's work is in the collection of the UW-Milwaukee library.

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Steve Nelson-Raney holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in music from Bradley University, studying piano with Harold Lewin and Gabriel DiPiazza and composition with Dean C. Howard. Jazz studies have included work with Ray Santisi, Jamie Aebersold, Jerry Coker and Lee Konitz. He has taught public school instrumental music in Illinois and jazz studies classes at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. He is active as a composer and performer throughout the country, working in jazz, contemporary music and free improvisation idioms. In 1979 Nelson-Raney founded Cody Books/Records (later to become CODYARTS) as a vehicle for documenting and distributing his work.

From 1991 to 2011 Nelson-Raney taught theory/composition and jazz studies courses in the Music Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; he directed the Contemporary Music Ensemble and co-directed the Jazz Studies program. He currently holds Senior Lecturer Emeritus status at UW-Milwaukee.

CONTACT:
Steve Nelson-Raney
3065 N. Bartlett
Milwaukee, WI 53211
USA
(414)332-0769