Neely Bruce — Composer, Pianist & Scholar of American Music
UPCOMING
SEPT 20 · 3:00 PM
Songs for Low Voice
Crowell Concert Hall · Wesleyan University
Christopher Grundy, baritone · Bryan Chuan, pianist
NOV 2026
Timaeus and The Teacher, Foreword
Brian Vu, tenor · Jamal Jackson Dance Company
with 5 reed instruments and a field drum
FEB 2026
An Album for Reed Quintet
World Premiere
JAN 2029
Neely Bruce at 85: A Gala Concert
2029
String Quartet Performances
Worldwide
SELECTED WORKS
A String Quartet for Alvin Lucier
String Quartet #1. Premiered by the West End String Quartet, November 2011.
Piano Rock Album
The Portals of Saint Bartholomew
Site-specific for St Bartholomew's Church, NYC. For men's, women's, and children's choruses, six soloists, two flutes, clarinet, two trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, six timpani, organ. Forces distributed throughout the space in 16 locations. Performed May 2008.
An Album for String Sextet
My longest piece of string chamber music — five substantial movements clocking in at 35½ minutes; longer than Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (my favorite string sextet) and longer than the first Brahms sextet, but not the second. The first movement, an expansive sonata form, is one of my most Brahmsian conceptions — perhaps it's the medium. "Braided Variations" is modeled on the magnificent two-themed variations of Haydn. The title of the finale is a nod to Benjamin Carr, whose "Paddy Carey, arranged as a rondo" is one of my favorite early 19th-century American piano pieces.
ABOUT
Photo: Christopher Felver · Author of American Jukebox
"Professor Bruce is a persuasive champion…of the alternative American repertoire."
— Michael Nyman, CBE · The Listener, BBC
"…possibly the hardest-working man in the serious-music business."
— Steve Metcalf · Hartford Courant
Neely Bruce is a composer, pianist, and professor at Wesleyan University whose work spans opera, orchestral, choral, chamber, and solo forms.