Nathaniel Heyder is a composer and violinist based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has attended festivals such as Luzerne Music Center, the National Symphony Orchestra Summer Music Institute, the Atlantic Music Festival, and Mostly Modern Music Festival. His compositions have received recognition including the YoungArts Merit Award (2017), the Neil Rabaut Memorial Composition Scholarship from the Interlochen Arts Academy, the 2017 NextNotes High School Composition Competition award presented by the American Composers Forum, Honorable Mention in the Webster University CMS Young Composers Challenge, Emerging Composer in the 2020 Division 2 Young Composer Competition by Tribeca New Music, and selection in the 2021 Nief-Norf Summer Festival International Call for Scores.

His music has been performed by members of The Cleveland Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. Heyder’s orchestral work Iterations was premiered by the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra under the direction of JoAnn Falletta, and he has also had orchestral premieres with the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (2024, Emerging Black Composers Award) and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (2025). In addition to his work as a composer, Heyder has taught violin and viola privately for over two years and has played both instruments in orchestral, chamber, and solo settings. He is particularly fond of the Suzuki method for younger students, while incorporating etudes, technical studies, scales, arpeggios, and double-stop work as students advance. Central to his teaching philosophy is selecting repertoire that genuinely excites and motivates each student, as he believes sustained enthusiasm is essential to long-term musical growth. During his undergraduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Heyder also studied piano privately. He completed his undergraduate degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied composition with Keith Fitch and received the Donald Erb Scholarship in Composition and the Gertrude E. Freeman and Lisa Freeman Roberts Memorial Fund. He earned his master’s degree at The Juilliard School, studying with Andrew Norman.