This Is It! 2.0: The Complete Chamber Music of Neely Bruce - Part V

Sunday, February 9, 2025 at 3:00pm
Crowell Concert Hall

Free and open to the public

Wesleyan students, faculty, and staff can RSVP on WesNest, but reservations are not required.

This festive concert, featuring works of chamber music by Neely Bruce, John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, continues a year-long celebration of the composer’s 50 years of teaching at Wesleyan. 

The West End String Quartet–Sarah Washburn and Marianne Vogel on violin, Wesleyan Chamber Music Ensemble Director John Biatowas on viola, and Anne Berry on cello–will perform A Partita for Aymeric Dupré la Tour, and the world premiere of Random Study for Oboe and String Quartet with special guest Oboe Instructor Libby Van Cleve.

The original This Is It! series featured seventeen concerts of Bruce’s piano music and concluded in March 2019. The first installment of This Is It! 2.0 was held in February 2022.

Neely Bruce is a composer, performer, and scholar of American music. His compositions include three full-length operas, five one-act operas, works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, and wind ensemble, and much more. While teaching at Wesleyan since 1974, he has also been involved in several major premieres, including “HPSCHD” by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller, “Meteor Farm” and other spatial works by Henry Brant, and the 20th-century revival of “Rip Van Winkle” by George Bristow. Bruce is the only pianist to have performed the complete solo vocal music of Charles Ives.