Nate began playing piano and violin and writing music at a young age. He refused to practice Hanon exercises, hymns, or anything by Edward MacDowell. Confounding one piano teacher after another, he learned music by reading and playing from scores, listening to records, composing, and staying hours after school to extract wisdom from his school orchestra conductor. Even an abysmal academic record and numerous adamant admissions officers failed to prevent him from attending music school. He holds a B.M. in Jazz Studies from Indiana University and an M.M. in Orchestral Conducting from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, where he was Associate Conductor for the Music Theater program.
His professional activities as a conductor enable his composing and jazz club habits, both of which are wildly out of control. While in Central Florida he was a member of the Stan Soloko Trio at Heidi’s Jazz Club (Cocoa Beach), had a regular trio at Houston’s Restaurant (Orlando), and was active as a freelance musician throughout the state. Artists he has accompanied include Petula Clark, George Sakellariou, Annie Sellick, Simone Kopmajer, and Marietta Simpson. He studied jazz piano with Phil DeGreg, Lynne Arriale, Mike Lucas and Luke Gillespie. He interests as a composer include combining jazz and classical musicians (hear some examples on the Media page) and he is working on an album of his own improvisational jazz chamber music. He studied with Michael Schelle, Eugene O’Brien, and at the Henry Mancini Institute, Jack Smalley and Vince Mendoza. His compositions have won awards from ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.).
As a conductor he was music director for Elon University’s Music Theatre program (Elon, NC), Seaside Music Theatre (Daytona Beach, FL), University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL), and assistant conductor at Tri-Cities Opera (Binghamton, NY) and Opera Theatre and Music Festival of Lucca (Lucca, Italy). He studied with Mark Gibson, Xian Zhang, Roger Grodsky, and J. Karla Lemon.
Nate currently lives in North Carolina where he is Resident Conductor of Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra. His most recent appearance at Lincoln Center was to purchase tickets at the box office.
In his free time Nate enjoys cats, literature, languages and traveling to Europe as often as possible.