The Richard Nelson Quartet featuring Hugh Buckley on guitar, Nicky Scott on bass and Chad Murray on drums.

If you turn on an Irish radio station and hear a pedal steel guitar, chances are that you are hearing Richard Nelson. The list of musicians he has performed with reads like a who’s who of top Irish musicians, from Van Morrison and Paul Brady to Daniel O’Donnell, and countless others. He has played on over 500 albums over the years. He is one of the most sought-after session musicians on the Irish music scene.

Richard has released three albums of jazz standards, the first “Moments Notice” in 2005, “Song for my Father” in 2019 and “No More Blues” in 2021 which charted in the USA airplay charts. He has collaborated with many of Ireland’s top jazz artists such as Phil Ware, Hugh Buckley, Dave Redmond, Ciaran Wilde, Cathal Roache and Myles Drennan. He is currently working on a new album with Nashville musicians; Marcus Finnie (drums) and Andy Reiss (guitar) and Irish guitarists; Lee Meehan Jimmy Smyth and Matt Curran.

He is the founder of the Irish Pedal Steel Guitar Festival which has been running annually for 19 years. He has also performed at many leading jazz venues and events such as Montreux Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Arthur’s, Dublin, The Workman’s Club, Dublin and Portalen jazz club in Copenhagen. He is also a graduate of the DIT masters in jazz performance programme. Richard is the co-author of “Jazz Theory for the Pedal Steel Guitarist” by Daniel Jones and Richard Nelson, a 167-page instruction as how to approach jazz on C6 tuning with 65 audio samples.