Neely Bruce

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Neely Bruce (b. 1944), Professor of Music and American Studies at Wesleyan University, is a composer, conductor, pianist and scholar of American music.

[edit] Biography

Bruce's undergraduate degree is from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and he received his DMA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His principal teachers were Ben Johnson, Hubert Kessler, J. F. Goossen, Lara Hoggard, Charles Hamm, Byrnell Figler, Roy McAllister, Soulima Stravinsky and Sophia Rosoff. Bruce was one of the seven keyboard players in the 1969 premiere of John Cage's HPSCHD. He has been visiting professor and artist-in-residence at Middlebury College, Bucknell University, the University of Michigan, and at Brooklyn College. He is the chorus director for Connecticut Opera, and, with his wife Phyllis, co-director of music at South Congregational Church in Middletown, Connecticut.

He is the first pianist ever to play the entirety of all songs composed by Charles Ives and perform them with several singers as part of the Ives Vocal Marathon.