Neely Bruce Music Foundation

01/23/2023

Meet our newest Board Member, Naomi Amos!

Naomi Amos received her B.A. at the University of Rochester and the Eastman School of Music, and her Master of Music at Eastman. She has taught in the music departments of Wesleyan University and Trinity College, both in Connecticut. She discovered her passion for the study of American music when she joined a professional group, American Music Theatre Group, directed by composer/pianist Neely Bruce, Wesleyan University. Since 2011, she has been a faculty member at the University of
Lynchburg, in the UL Senior Symposium program and in Westover Honors College, teaching a variety of arts/humanities courses, including a seminar on Arts in the Depression.

In recent years, Amos has accompanied and coached eleven operas with Opera on the James. From 2011-2016 she played three 8-hand piano concerts for Forte Chamber Music. Also for Forte, Amos was pianist for three chamber concerts. She has performed numerous recitals with Alicia Carter, vocalist, and professor at University of Lynchburg.

Naomi Amos is a popular music lecture-recitalist, on topics such as “The Effects of the Melting Pot,” “Music of George and Ira Gershwin,” “Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time”” and “Music of the Depression Era.” Her current project is “Rediscovering Louis Moreau Gottschalk: Enigmatic and Brilliant 19 th Century Musical Superstar.” She is artistic consultant and participates as researcher/narrator and pianist.

12/12/2022

The Neely Bruce Music Foundation's website is now up and running at https://www.neelybruce.foundation/

Please consider making a donation via the "Make a Donation" PayPal link on the home page!

The Neely Bruce Music Foundation Our MissionPreserving and advancing the compositions and other musical legacy of Neely Bruce, for the purpose of making it available to scholars, students, and the general public. The musical legacy of other American composers of special importance may also be suppor...

12/07/2022

Meet our new board member Roger Matthew Grant!

Roger is Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, where he is currently serving as Dean of Arts and Humanities. He is the author of Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era (Oxford University Press, 2014), which won the 2016 Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory. His most recent book is Peculiar Attunements: How Affect Theory Turned Musical (Fordham University Press, 2020).

11/30/2022

Meet Founding Board Member Christopher Grundy!

Christopher has been an advocate for Neely Bruce's music since their first collaboration 15 years ago. He is a bass-baritone who has performed as a soloist throughout North America and Europe in opera, oratorio and recital. Operatic performances include title roles in Don Giovanni and Aleko (Rachmaninov), Count Danilo (The Merry Widow), the Vicar (Albert Herring), Alfieri (View from the Bridge), Smirnov (The Bear), Baron Ochs (Der Rosenkavalier) and Dr. Falke (Die Fledermaus). On one week's notice he learned the lead baritone role for the world premiere of Decameron with the International Opera Theater of Philadelphia. He appears on the Naxos Records world premiere recording of Bernard Rand’s “Vincent.”

As an oratorio soloist Christopher has performed a wide range of composers, including Britten’s War Requiem; the Requiems of Mozart, Fauré, & Duruflé; Mendelssohn’s Elijah; Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium & numerous cantatas; Handel’s Messiah; Vaughan Williams’s Hodie & Five Mystical Songs; Charpentier’s Te Deum; and many more.

Song recitals are Christopher’s greatest passion as a singer. He gave his first all-Schubert recital at age 16, and has never stopped. His ever-growing song repertoire spans seven centuries and many languages. Christopher has commissioned and premiered song repertoire by many contemporary composers. He appears on a recent Parma Records release featuring the songs of American composer Elizabeth Austin.

Christopher received his Doctor of Music from the Indiana University, studying with the celebrated German baritone Wolfgang Brendel. He completed his B.A. at Yale University, where he was the assistant conductor of the Yale Glee Club and the Yale Russian Chorus.

Christopher lives in Stamford, Connecticut, where he maintains a private voice studio. He is on the Performing Arts Faculty of Sacred Heart University, and is Director of Music at the Unitarian Society of New Haven. Christopher serves on the Board of Directors of the Boys & Girls Club of Stamford.

Christopher is a retired commercial helicopter pilot & flight instructor with over 2,000 hours of flight time.

08/02/2022

Meet Founding Board Member, and current Board President, Neely Bruce!

Neely is a prolific composer, pianist, conductor, and scholar of American music whose new oratorio Circular 14: The Apotheosis of Aristides, for soloists, two choruses, and a large orchestra was previewed in Los Angeles in 2016 and Salt Lake City in 2018. His third opera, Flora, was commissioned and produced by Spoleto USA, and can be heard online at NPR’s World of Opera. Hansel and Gretel was commissioned and produced by Connecticut Opera, and subsequently produced at Trinity College of Music (London) and the University of Illinois. Americana, or, a New Tale of the Genii was commissioned by the NEA and produced in semi-staged concert version at Symphony Space (NYC). Pyramus and Thisbe, Bruce’s first one-act opera, was recently revived by the Graduate Opera Workshop at Indiana University. Other works of Bruce’s that have been widely heard include seven documentary scores for PBS; his setting of the Bill of Rights to music in the style of William Billings for chorus and eight instruments, which has been performed dozens of times by professional and dedicated amateur ensembles; and his largest work, CONVERGENCE, which was commissioned by the American Composers Forum, as part of its Continental Harmony project and premiered in 2000 at the New Haven International Festival of Arts and Ideas. The work was revised and expanded for the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors in 2002, where it was received by an enthusiastic audience of 10,000 listeners.
Bruce’s enthusiasms include William Billings, The Sacred Harp, Anthony Philip Heinrich (“the Beethoven of America”), Arthur Farwell, Charles Ives, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, and the work of his late mentor, Henry Brant. He was the founder and director of two ensembles devoted exclusively to the music of the United States—the American Music Group (at the University of Illinois) and the American Music/Theatre Group, headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut. Important engagements as a conductor include the 20th century revival of Rip Van Winkle by George Bristow, several major works of Brant, and premieres by Brant, Oliveros, Fulkerson, Wolff. Important premieres as a keyboard player include The Time Curve Preludes of William Duckworth, Twelve Fugues by Gerald Shapiro, HPSCHD by Cage and Hiller, the Farwell Piano Sonata, and the first complete public performance of Organ and Silence by Tom Johnson. In 2009 he became the only pianist to have performed all of the solo vocal music of Charles Ives, and in 2013 he began "This Is It!" — a series of seventeen recitals comprising his complete music for piano, which concluded in 2019. In 2022 he began "This Is It! 2.0" — a series of concerts featuring his considerable chamber music output and his song cycles. Neely Bruce is the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music at Wesleyan University.